Read Pope Saint Pius X on Pope Saint Gregory the Great

Today, Tuesday, March 12, 2024, is the Feast of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, a doctor of Holy Mother Church, who was most prolific in his writing in the fourteen years of his pontificate, 590 to 604 A.D, and the Commemoration Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Lent. Pope Saint Gregory the Great was also zealous for the missionary work necessary to Catholicize the world, sending the Benedictine monk Augustine to convert King Ethelbert on the island of Great Britain. Although England had given Holy Mother Church saints in the past (Saint Alban and his fellow protomartyrs, Julius and Aaron), it was the work of Saint Augustine of Canterbury that made possible the Catholicization of all of England. And it was the Catholicization of England that made it possible for there to be missionaries, such as Saint Boniface (Winfred), to sent to evangelize the Germans and the Dutch.

Pope Saint Gregory the Great took seriously these words that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ spoke to the Eleven before He Ascended to God the Father’s right hand in glory on Ascension Thursday: 

And the eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And seeing him they adored: but some doubted. And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. (Matthew 28: 16-20.)

True to the completely Catholic spirit of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, Pope Saint Pius X, writing in Notre Charge Apostolique one hundred years ago this year, that is, on August 15, 1910, desired to do what his saintly predecessor had done fourteen hundred years before: to re-establish all things in Christ the King, to build the Catholic City, outside of which it is impossible for there to be true social order:

This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests. 

No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker – the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. omnia instaurare in Christo. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

Pope Saint Gregory the Great understood that Catholicism and Catholicism alone is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. He was tireless in his efforts to restore a firm sense of discipline to the papacy and to remind the bishops of the world that they are answerable to Successor of Saint Peter, the Bishop of Rome, the Sovereign Pontiff, the Vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ on earth. Many revisionist historians from the false sects of Protestantism contend that Pope Saint Gregory the Great “established” the papacy. Au contraire. Pope Saint Gregory the Great merely reasserted the royal prerogatives of the papacy that the effects of the barbaric invasions had weakened for a time.

The son of a noble Roman who preferred solicitude in prayer as a monk to all else, Pope Saint Gregory the Great was unstinting in his efforts to rebuke the clergy for their lives of sloth and neglect of prayer, which is why he wrote A Rule of Pastoral Life, also known as The Pastoral Guide, to exhort bishops and priests to be courageous in the face of evil, never afraid to proclaim the truth, never to shrink from defending the innocent and, above all else, never to be silent when the honor and glory and majesty of God and His Deposit of Faith are under attack by heretics, unbelievers or Judases from within the ranks of the Church:   

The Lord reproaches them through the prophet: They are dumb dogs that cannot bark. On another occasion he complains: You did not advance against the foe or set up a wall in front of the house of Israel, so that you might stand fast in battle on the day of the Lord. To advance against the foe involves a bold resistance to the powers of this world in defense of the flock. To stand fast in battle on the day of the Lord means to oppose the wicked enemy out of love for what is right.

When a pastor has been afraid to assert what is right, has he not turned his back and fled by remaining silent? Whereas if he intervenes on behalf of the flock, he sets up a wall against the enemy in front of the house of Israel. Therefore, the Lord again says to his unfaithful people: Your prophets saw false and foolish visions and did not point out your wickedness, that you might repent of your sins. The name of the prophet is sometimes given in the sacred writings to teachers who both declare the present to be fleeting and reveal what is to come. The word of God accuses them of seeing false visions because they are afraid to reproach men for their faults and thereby lull the evildoer with an empty promise of safety. Because they fear reproach, they keep silent and fail to point out the sinner’s wrongdoing.  

The word of reproach is a key that unlocks a door, because reproach reveals a fault of which the evildoer is himself often unaware. That is why Paul says of the bishop: He must be able to encourage men in sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. For the same reason God tells us through Malachi: The lips of the priest are to preserve knowledge, and men shall look to him for the law, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.Finally, that is also the reason why the Lord warns us through Isaiah: Cry out and be not still; raise your voice in a trumpet call.  

Anyone ordained a priest undertakes the task of preaching, so that with a loud cry he may go on ahead of the terrible judge who follows. If, then, a priest does not know how to preach, what kind of cry can such a dumb herald utter? It was to bring this home that the Holy Ghost descended in the form of tongues on the first pastors, for he causes those whom he has filled, to speak out spontaneously. (For two different translations, see: The Book of Pastoral Rule and That the ruler should be discreet in keeping silence, profitable in speech.)  

Pope Pius VI cited these very words of Pope Saint Gregory the Great in his first encyclical letter, Inscrutabile, December 25, 1775, which was cited over five years ago now in Prepare for the Coming Persecution.

As noted before, Pope Saint Gregory the Great, who wrote the definitive biography of Saint Benedict of Nursia, sent his fellow Benedictine, Saint Augustine of Canterbury, to re-evangelize the truculent people of the British Isles at a time that they were steeped in the throes of the sort of paganism that is on the rise in our midst at this time spared no effort to discharge his duties as the Supreme Pontiff so that he would be able to give an account to the One Whose Vicar he was at the moment of his Particular Judgment. The holy example of Pope Saint Gregory the Great helped many of those who followed him on the Throne of Saint Peter to defend the integrity of the Holy Faith and to ward off the attacks of Holy Mother Church’s enemies, and one of those who was particularly inspired by the example of the saint whose feast fell this year during the First Week of Lent was none other than Pope Saint Pius X.

Indeed, it can be said that Pope Saint Pius X was the last true disciplinarian to serve on the Throne of Saint Peter. This is to take nothing away from the personal holiness of Pope Pius XII. However, our last true pope did, we should remember, put almost all the men who worked to destroy Catholic Faith, Worship and Morals at the “Second” Vatican Council in their positions of prominence that they used even during his pontificate to gather unto them like-minded revolutionaries. Neither Pope Saint Gregory the Great nor Pope Saint Pius X, for example, would have countenanced the likes of Angelo Roncalli, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, Annibale Bugnini, et al., for very long. Pope Saint Pius X, though, was without peer in the past two hundred years as a governor of Holy Mother Church according to the mind of Pope Saint Gregory the Great himself as expressed in his Book of Pastoral Rule.

How fitting it was, therefore, that Pope Saint Pius X saw fit to commemorate the holy life and firm example of Pope Saint Gregory the Great in an encyclical letter, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904, just seven months after his own ascent to the Throne of Saint Peter. There is no better way to celebrate this feast today than by using this encyclical letter as the basis of a reflection on the second Successor of Saint Peter to have been called “the great” after Pope Saint Leo the Great.

Pope Saint Pius X specifically noted that he meant to use the example of Pope Saint Gregory the Great as a model for his own governance of Holy Mother Church:

Joyful indeed comes the remembrance, Venerable Brethren, of that great and incomparable man, the Pontiff Gregory, first of the name, whose centenary solemnity, at the close of the thirteenth century since his death, we are about to celebrate. By that God who killeth and maketh alive, who humbleth and exalteth, it was ordained, not, We think, without a special providence, that amid the almost innumerable cares of Our Apostolic ministry, amid all the anxieties which the government of the Universal Church imposes upon Us, amid our pressing solicitude to satisfy as best We may your claims, Venerable Brethren, who have been called to a share in Our Apostolate, and those of all the faithful entrusted to Our care, Our gaze at the beginning of Our Pontificate should be turned at once towards that most holy and illustrious Predecessor of Ours, the honor of the Church and its glory. For Our heart is filled with great confidence in his most powerful intercession with God, and strengthened by the memory of the sublime maxims he inculcated in his lofty office and of the virtues devoutly practiced by him. And since by the force of the former and the fruitfulness of the latter he has left on God’s Church a mark so vast, so deep, so lasting, that his contemporaries and posterity have justly given him the name of Great, and to-day, after all these centuries, the eulogy of his epitaph is still verified: “He lives eternal in every place by his innumerable good works” (Apud Joann. Diac., Vita Greg. iv. 68) it will surely be given, with the help of Divine grace, to all followers of his wonderful example, to fulfill the duties of their own offices, as far as human weakness permits. (Pope Saint Gregory the Great, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

Although we are nearly just under six months away from the celebration of the Feast of Pope Saint Pius X on September 3, 2024, all believing Catholics know that Pope Saint Pius X was very faithful in following the saintly example of Pope Saint Gregory the Great as the Universal Pastor at a time when Modernism was on the march and when the once formerly Catholic nations of Europe were about to embark the madness of a war that was the consequence of the rise of nationalism as the substitute for the supra-nationalism given by the Catholic Faith alone as the one and only bond that unites men and nations around the One Shepherd aboard the one Barque of Saint Peter.

Alas, the time in which Pope Saint Gregory the Great lived was also marked by its own difficulties, including some that parallel, at least in an allegorical if not literal sense, the problems extant in the world today:

2. There is but little need to repeat here what public documents have made known to all. When Gregory assumed the Supreme Pontificate the disorder in public affairs had reached its climax; the ancient civilization had all but disappeared and barbarism was spreading throughout the dominions of the crumbling Roman Empire. Italy, abandoned by the Emperors of Byzantium, had been left a prey of the still unsettled Lombards who roamed up and down the whole country laying waste everywhere with fire and sword and bringing desolation and death in their train. This very city, threatened from without by its enemies, tried from within by the scourges of pestilence, floods and famine, was reduced to such a miserable plight that it had become a problem how to keep the breath of life in the citizens and in the immense multitudes who flocked hither for refuge. Here were to be found men and women of all conditions, bishops and priests carrying the sacred vessels they had saved from plunder, monks and innocent spouses of Christ who had sought safety in flight from the swords of the enemy or from the brutal insults of abandoned men. Gregory himself calls the Church of Rome: “An old ship woefully shattered; for the waters are entering on all sides, and the joints, buffeted by the daily stress of the storm, are growing rotten and herald shipwreck” (Registrum i., 4 ad Joannem episcop. Constantino.). But the pilot raised up by God had a strong hand, and when placed at the helm succeeding not only in making the port in despite of the raging seas, but in saving the vessel from future storms. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

We live a time when new forms of barbarism have arisen. The scions of Talmudism and Freemasonry have taken full advantage of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ to produce a dehumanized world wherein human beings are valued almost exclusively on the basis of their “quality of life” and/or “productive enough” to be deemed worthy of medical treatment. After over five decades of warfare against the innocent preborn by means of surgical abortion and against all others by means of “brain death” and the vivisection of human beings justified by it, the soulless merchants of death who captain the deathcare industry are now moving to deliver messages from physicians to patients via robots to inform them, the patients, that they are dying:

FREMONT, Calif. (KTVU) - When Ernest Quintana went into Kaiser Permanente Medical Center's emergency department in Fremont on Sunday, his wife of 58 years, his son, daughter and  granddaughter all worried about the 79-year-old man. 

They say it was hard enough to learn that his lungs were failing, but they couldn't believe it when a hospital robot entered his room and they got the news through a doctor on the robot's video screen.

Quintana's granddaughter was in the ICU by his side, and she said at first the nurse came in.

"The nurse came around and said the doctor was going to make rounds and I thought 'OK, no big deal, I'm here,' " said Annalisia Wilharm.

A short time later, a robot arrived in the room. A doctor appeared on a video screen. Wilharm took cell phone video so she could show her mother and grandmother the test results. 

"When I took the video, I didn't realize all of this was going to unfold," she said. 

Over the robot's video screen, Wilharm says she and her grandfather learned that Quintana's lungs were failing and he did not have long to live. 

You might not make it home," the doctor said on the screen. 

Wilharm says that heartbreaking news hurt even more, delivered through a machine.

"Devastated. I was going to lose my grandfather. We knew that this was coming and that he was very sick. But I don't think somebody should get the news delivered that way. It should have been a human being come in," Wilharm  said. 

Daughter Catherine Quintana says the family is also upset because her father had trouble hearing the doctor through the robot's speaker forcing Wilharm to relay the terrible news. 

"He already has a problem hearing. So with that, and everything, he couldn't hear very well. She had to repeat everything the doctor was saying," Catherine Quintana said.

The Quintana family says they hope this never happens to another family.

"We offer our sincere condolences," said Kaiser Permanente Senior Vice-President Michelle Gaskill-Hames in a written statement, "We use video technology as an appropriate enhancement to the care team, and a way to bring additional consultative expertise to the bedside."

Catherine Quintana said she and her mother asked hospital staff about how the robot was used.

"It's policy, that's what we do now. That's what we were told," said Catherine Quintana. 

"This is a highly unusual circumstance.  We regret falling short in meeting the patient's and family's expectations in this situation and we will use this as an opportunity to review our practices and standards with the care team," said the Kaiser statement. 

Then Quintana family hopes Kaiser and any other hospitals with robots will review their policies and how they are integrating the technology into patients' care. Quintana ended up dying on Tuesday.

"I don't want this to happen to anyone else. It just shouldn't happen," Catherine Quintana said.

Full Statement from Michelle Gaskill-Hames, Senior Vice President and Area Manager, Kaiser Permanente Greater Southern Alameda County:

"On behalf of Kaiser Permanente and our caregivers in Fremont, we offer our sincere condolences. It is always deeply painful to lose a beloved family member and friend. While we cannot comment on specifics of an individual's medical care due to privacy laws, we take this very seriously and have reached out to the family to discuss their concerns. We use video technology as an appropriate enhancement to the care team, and a way to bring additional consultative expertise to the bedside. Our health care staff receive extensive training in the use of telemedicine, but video technology is not used as a replacement for in-person evaluations and conversations with patients. In every aspect of our care, and especially when communicating difficult information, we do so with compassion in a personal manner. This is a highly unusual circumstance.  We regret falling short in meeting the patient's and family's expectations in this situation and we will use this as an opportunity to review our practices and standards with the care team.(Doctor Tells Patient he does not have long to live through robot's video screenn.)

The statement issued by Kaiser Permanente is of the sort that one would get from the management of hotel chain when a patron has reported problems after staying in one of their facilities. Today’s corporate world can never use the word “problems,” using the euphemism “issues” to make it appear as though the complaints are matter of subjective perspective and are not based in objective facts. Kaiser Permanente’s robo-message (aka “bug letter” reply) asserted that nothing was out of the ordinary with how the “telemedicine” message was delivered to a dying patient, expressing their regrets that the family did not understand the situation. In other words, another way has been found to dehumanize the relationship between patients and doctors, who already rely upon “nurse practitioners” and “physicians’ assistants” to “interface” with patients, that is premised upon “quality of life” factors discussed at length in Chronicling the Adversary's Global Takeover of the Healthcare Industry.

Ours is a time of dehumanization and virtual slavery (to the usurious banking industry, to corporations whose officials treat employees as “units of production” rather than as human beings as they as pushed to the uttermost extent of their physical strength and told to work excessively long hours before the time comes for them to be replaced by robots, to Amazon/Google and other such firms that “own” us while giving us the “privilege” of using their services). It is a time of the murder of the innocent at every stage of human existence. It is the time of bread and circuses. It is a time of rank barbarism as antisocial “plugged-in” human beings, many of them heavily tattooed, walk much zombies heedless of the fact that they have immortal souls redeemed by shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

The conditions facing us today are, therefore, very similar to those that faced Pope Saint Gregory the Great as the Eternal City of Rome, the seat of the papacy that he held, had been ravaged by the barbaric invasions for nearly two centuries before he acceded to the Throne of Saint Peter in 590 A.D.  However, the barbarians of today are not confined to the secular world of politics, commerce, industry, banking and ordinary living as the barbarians of Modernism have indeed laid hold of the treasures of Holy Mother Church. The barbarians of Modernism have welcomed other barbarians into Rome to bring their own false beliefs and hideous liturgical rites to the city sanctified by the blood of Saints Peter and Paul and of countless millions of martyrs in the first three centuries of the Church.

Among the barbarians who have been welcomed into Rome by Jorge the Barbarian are the Mormons, a hideous American-centric sect founder by a con-artist, Joseph Smith, who believed that the “Angel Moroni” had revealed to him the “Book of Mormon” on gold tablets that then disappeared. Mormonism blasphemously contends that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and satan were “spirit brothers” who will be reconciled in the end (the “reconciliation” between Our Lord and the adversary was also a belief of the “restorer of tradition’s” mentor, Father Hans Urs von Balthasar) and that He had “married” Saint Mary Magdalene. Mormonism is a false religion that combines the rites of Judeo-Masonry with the lusts of its blaspheming founder, whose own false religion was prompted by the very sinful desires that drove Martin Luther and Henry VIII to form their own false religious sects:

President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints met with Pope Francis inside the Vatican Saturday, the first meeting between a Latter-day Saint president and a pope. The visit comes a day before President Nelson dedicates the Church’s first temple in Rome. President Nelson was joined by President M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Following the 33-minute meeting, President Nelson and President Ballard met with members of the media. "We had a most cordial, unforgettable experience. His Holiness, he was most gracious and warm and welcoming," said President Nelson. He continued, "What a sweet, wonderful man he is, and how fortunate the Catholic people are to have such a gracious, concerned, loving and capable leader."

President Nelson said, "We talked about our mutual concern for the people who suffer throughout the world and want to relieve human suffering. We talked about the importance of religious liberty, the importance of the family, our mutual concern for the youth [and] for the secularization of the world and the need for people to come to God and worship Him, pray to Him and have the stability that faith in Jesus Christ will bring in their lives."

According to President Ballard, they spoke of the close relations the two faiths have in working together on humanitarian projects. "We explained to His Holiness that we work side by side, that we have projects with Catholic Relief Services all over the world in over 43 countries. [We've] been shoulder to shoulder as partners in trying to relieve suffering. He was very interested in that."

Elder Alessandro Dini-Ciacci, a local leader in Rome, also attended the meeting. "How inspiring it was for me to witness two of the leaders of the leading faiths in the world meet together and share brotherhood," he said. "This is beautiful to witness and something we can sure learn from in our association with people of other faiths." Elder Massimo De Feo of the Seventy was present and said the leaders immediately connected. "It was a wonderful feeling to see how they seemed to be like old friends after a minute. President Nelson and Pope Francis share so much love and mutual respect for each other."

Interfaith dialogue has been a practice of Latter-day Saint leaders from the founding days of the faith. Since becoming leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2018, President Nelson has engaged with Roman Catholic prelates during several of his ministry stops. In Texas last November, he met with Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio. And last month in Arizona, he spoke to Most Rev. Thomas J. Olmsted, Catholic Bishop of Phoenix. President Nelson has engaged in similar outreach many times in his 35 years of service as an apostle, traveling to more than 130 countries to minister to Latter-day Saints and friends of the faith.

President Nelson was interviewed in October 2018 by Sergio Rubin, the biographer of Pope Francis, during a ministry stop in Uruguay. President Nelson and Mr. Rubin briefly discussed the Rome Italy Temple. “We appreciate the kindness of the pope and the Vatican. They are most gracious in welcoming us,” the prophet said at the time.

Past interfaith dialogue between Catholics and Latter-day Saints at the Vatican includes President Henry B. Eyring (a counselor to the late Church President Thomas S. Monson) shaking hands with Pope Francis during a Vatican summit on marriage. In 2010, President Ballard visited Catholic leaders at the Vatican. In 1995, then-president Gordon B. Hinckley gave a copy of the Encyclopedia of Mormonism to the Vatican Library.

Catholic and Latter-day Saint leaders have also met in many other places. For example, in 2010 the late Cardinal Francis George (1937–2015), then the leader of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), spoke at Brigham Young University and met with Latter-day Saint apostles. More recently, apostles have discussed issues of common ground with Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York. And several Catholic leaders have made visits to Utah. This includes Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville (then the president of the USCCB), who visited Temple Square in 2016, and Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia, who has spoken at Brigham Young University several times. In 2015, Archbishop Chaput invited Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to share principles Latter-day Saints employ to strengthen families during the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.

In Utah, the Church has cultivated a strong relationship in recent decades with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City. President Ballard and Elder Christofferson joined Catholics in Utah for the installation of Bishop Oscar A. Solis, who was appointed by Pope Francis in 2017 to lead Catholics in Utah. “Latter-day Saints cherish the long-standing friendship we have developed with the Catholic community in Utah and around the world,” President Ballard said at the time. President Ballard also attended the installation mass for Archbishop John C. Wester in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Archbishop Wester, Bishop Solis’s predecessor, was the Catholic bishop in Utah for eight years.  (Jorge the Blaspheming Barbarian Meets Leader of Blaspheming Mormons.)

Here is a quick, no-cost memorandum to “Archbishop” Chaput: The Divine Constitution of the Catholic Church has no need of being “supplemented” or “enriched” by the false beliefs of non-Catholics, including those whose formula of “baptism” was rejected by your own Vatican in 2001 as follows:

The formula applied by the Mormons might appear to be a Trinitarian formula. But in reality, while the formula of the Mormons is similar to the formula of the Catholic faith, there is no fundamental doctrinal agreement in its application. The Mormon invocation of the Trinity is not a true invocation of the Trinity because the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, according to them, are not three persons in which subsists the one Godhead, but three gods who form one divinity.

The Mormons believe that the divinity originated when three gods decided to unite and form the divinity in order to bring about human salvation. Furthermore, the Mormons believe that God the Father is an exalted man, a native from another planet, who has acquired his divine status through a death similar to that of human beings, this being a necessary way of becoming divine. God the Father has relatives and this is explained by the doctrine of infinite regression of the gods who initially were mortal. God the Father has a wife, the Heavenly Mother, with whom he shared the responsibility of creation. They procreated sons in the spiritual world. Their firstborn was Jesus Christ, equal to all men, who acquired his divinity in a pre-mortal existence. Even the Holy Spirit was the son of heavenly parents. The Son and the Holy Spirit were procreated after the beginning of the creation of the world known to mankind. Four gods were directly responsible for the universe, three of whom established a covenant and therefore formed the divinity.

As can be appreciated, the Mormon baptism does not in any way contain the doctrinal belief that is associated with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The words, "Father, Son and Holy Spirit," have for the Mormons, a totally different meaning than that of the Christian faiths.

While this is only one reason, that being sufficient to affirm that the Mormon baptism is not valid, there are other reasons. Over and above the Mormon belief that there is no real Trinity, the Mormons do not believe in original sin, nor that Christ instituted baptism. Based on this, those who believe that they were baptized in the Mormon religion, must be baptized in the Catholic faith upon their conversion because they were never validly baptized as commanded by Jesus and taught by the Catholic faith. (Questions about baptism in the Mormon Church. The official commentary released on the conclusion about the invalidity of Mormon baptism reached by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is a complete and utter creature of conciliarism in that it makes reference to "dialogue" and "mutual respect" and not the conversion of the Mormons. Even correct conclusions such as this one suffer from those drops of poison that betray the true mind of the conciliarists. See The Question of the Validity of Baptism conferred in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.)

The anti-sedevacantist Tradition in Action website published a good summary of Mormon beliefs in 2012 when Willard Mitt Romney was running for Republican Party’s presidential nomination:

What, exactly, therefore, is the doctrine of the Mormon religion, vis-à-vis what the Mormons themselves have become? (3) One example of their doctrines is the one that declares war on Catholics, stating that the Roman Catholic Church is the "most abominable above all other churches" (4).

According to Mormon teaching (5), in New York in the early 19th century, Moroni, the son of a Nephite general turned angel, paid a visit to a young illiterate treasure hunter named Joseph Smith. Moroni gave his permission for Smith to dig up some hidden golden plates, hitherto guarded by a "white salamander"(6), an occult figure. One Mormon historian, Michael Quinn, in fact was excommunicated for his "painstaking work (documenting) Smith's involvement with the occult" (7). Moroni presented Smith with some magic spectacles to read the hieroglyphics written on the plates, which was in "Reformed Egyptian." Since Smith couldn't write, he hired others to do the job. Among them was Oliver Cowdery, an unemployed school teacher.

Cowdery sat under a blanket and dictated from the plates The Book of Mormon, believed by Mormons to be the true history of our continent from 600 B.C. to 421 A.D. We are informed by their teaching "that Christ preached to the American Indians after His ascension and founded a church among them for the Western hemisphere... That (Smith) re-established the church of Christ which had been wiped out in the Americas and had apostatized elsewhere... (and) that the Mormon church is the only true Christian religion." Moroni further states that, pari passu, "all existing churches were in error, corrupt and apostate."

From the golden tablets we learn that North and South America were peopled by Jews, who came by ship from Palestine. Eventually they split into two nations, the Lamanites and the Nephites. Christ appeared to the Nephites, chose 12 Indian apostles and set up a church which was a counterpart of the Church he had established in Jerusalem. The Lamanites killed off the Nephites, and Moroni buried the plates which recounted the history of his race.

According to Bringham Young, Jesus was a polygamist and Mary and Martha were two of his wives. Mormon theology also teaches that the god of this world is a man (probably Adam), a physical being, a polygamist. Further, God did not create matter, which existed eternally (he 'organized' it.) There is not one God but many gods, and Mormons can become gods of other planets when they die.

The Book of Mormon contains verbatim, lengthy statements from the New Testament. In his study on it, Whalen observes:

"It abounds in anachronisms, contradictions, and stock Campbellite answers to the theological questions of the early 19th century. At times its hindsight prophecy becomes entangled in such statements as `the son of God shall be born of Mary at Jerusalem.' Shakespearean students will be surprised to find the phrase ‘the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns’ appearing in a passage written 2200 years before the Bard (8).

It will be interesting to observe how American voters react to Mitt Romney. His religion seems impossibly at odds with the disciplines of archaeology, anthropology, history and philology, to mention a few. If a person is willing to buy into the magic glasses and golden plates story (they seem to have disappeared) and all that came from it, what else is he willing to believe? But one of the most disturbing things about Mormonism is the bold claim that "all" other churches are in apostasy.

It seems Mormons may have a secret knowledge. The same kind of exclusive knowledge exists in Gnosticism, which affirms that "unless carefully interpreted according to this secret wisdom, everything the Bible says is wrong" (9).  (Mormon enigmas.)

Still think that Catholics have something to learn from Mormons, “Archbishop” Chaput?

The conciliar “bishops” and their current “pope” treat Mormonism with respect.

Pope Saint Gregory the Great and Pope Saint Pius X would have treated it with utter contempt and condemnation. (See the late Francis "Cardinal" George's elegy of praise for this blasphemous religion as dissected in Union of Americanists).

Yes, the barbarians are here, and they occupy the buildings of the Catholic Church as robber barons after the example of Martin Luther and Henry VIII, who stole the buildings and property of Holy Mother Church five hundred years ago.

The conciliar revolutionaries have worked to bring down the destruction of the existing ruins of Western civilization by opening themselves up to every religious heresy and false philosophy that have undergirded the anti-Incarnational superstructure of Modernity. As Pope Saint Pius X explained, Pope Saint Gregory the Great worked unapologetically to build up Christendom on the only foundation possible: the Catholic Faith:

3. Truly wonderful is the work he was able to effect during his reign of little more than thirteen years. He was the restorer of Christian life in its entirety, stimulating the devotion of the faithful, the observance of the monks, the discipline of the clergy, the pastoral solicitude of the bishops. Most prudent father of the family of Christ that he was (Joann. Diac-, Vita Greg. ii. 51), he preserved and increased the patrimony of the Church, and liberally succored the impoverished people, Christian society, and individual churches, according to the necessities of each. Becoming truly God’s Consul (Epitaph), he pushed his fruitful activity far beyond the walls of Rome, and entirely for the advantage of civilized society. He opposed energetically the unjust claims of the Byzantine Emperors; he checked the audacity and curbed the shameless avarice of the exarchs and the imperial administrators, and stood up in public as the defender of social justice. He tamed the ferocity of the Lombards, and did not hesitate to meet Agulfus at the gates of Rome in order to prevail upon him to raise the siege of the city, just as the Pontiff Leo the Great did in the case of Attila; nor did he desist in his prayers, in his gentle persuasion, in his skillful negotiation, until he saw that dreaded people settle down and adopt a more regular government; until he knew that they were won to the Catholic faith, mainly through the influence of the pious Queen Theodolinda, his daughter in Christ. Hence Gregory may justly be called the savior and liberator of Italy — his own land, as he tenderly calls her. (Pope Saint Pius X, t, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

“Pope Francis” greets the modern barbarians, including out-and-out baby-killers such as Emma Bonino, with hugs and kisses. Pope Saint Gregory the Great wanted to win one and all to the Catholic Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order. Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his band of conciliar revolutionaries reaffirm non-Catholics, including atheists, in their false beliefs while denouncing any and all efforts to win converts to the Catholic Church as “proselytism.”

Pope Saint Pius X, who tried to deal with Modernists with gentleness before he threw down the gauntlet in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, explained that Pope Saint Gregory the Great put out the remaining embers of heresy in Italy and Africa and, as explained earlier, brought England firmly into the fold of the Good Shepherd and helped to complete the work of the conversion of the Visigoths in Spain:

4. Through his incessant pastoral care the embers of heresy in Italy and Africa die out, ecclesiastical life in the Gauls is re-organized, the Visigoths of the Spains are welded together in the conversion which has already been begun among them, and the renowned English nation, which, “situated in a corner of the world, while it had hitherto remained obstinate in the worship of wood and stone” (Reg. viii. 29, 30, ad Eulog. Episcop. Alexandr.), now also receives the true faith of Christ. Gregory’s heart overflowed with joy at the news of this precious conquest, for his is the heart of a father embracing his most beloved son, and in attributing all the merit of it to Jesus the Redeemer, “for whose love,” as he himself writes, “we are seeking our unknown brethren in Britain, and through whose grace we find unknown ones we were seeking” (Reg. xi. 36 (28), ad Augustin. Anglorum Episcopum). And so grateful to the Holy Pontiff was the English nation that they called him always: our Master, our Doctor, our Apostle, our Pope, our Gregory, and considered itself as the seal of his apostolate. In fine, so salutary and so efficacious was his action that the memory of the works wrought by him became deeply impressed on the minds of posterity, especially during the Middle Ages, which breathed, so to say, the atmosphere infused by him, fed on his words, conformed its life and manners according to the example inculcated by him, with the result that Christian social civilization was happily introduced into the world in opposition to the Roman civilization of the preceding centuries, which now passed away for ever.

5. This is the change of the right hand of the Most High! And well may it be said that in the mind of Gregory the hand of God alone was operative in these great events. What he wrote to the most holy monk Augustine about this same conversion of the English may be equally applied to all the rest of his apostolic action: “Whose work is this but His who said: My Father worketh till now, and I work? (John v. 17). To show the world that He wished to convert it, not by the wisdom of men, but by His own power, He chose unlettered men to be preachers to the world; and the same He has now done, vouchsafing to accomplish through weak men great things among the nation of the Angles” (Reg. xi. 36 (28)). We, indeed, may discern much that the holy Pontiff’s profound humility hid from his own sight: his knowledge of affairs, his talent for bringing his undertakings to a successful issue, the wonderful prudence shown in all his provisions, his assiduous vigilance, his persevering solicitude. But it is, nevertheless, true that he never put himself forward as one invested with the might and power of the great ones of the earth, for instead of using the exalted prestige of the Pontifical dignity, he preferred to call himself the Servant of the Servants of God, a title which he was the first to adopt. It was not merely by profane science or the “persuasive words of human wisdom (I Cor. ii. 4) that he traced out his career, or by the devices of civil politics, or by systems of social renovation, skillfully studied, prepared and put in execution; nor yet, and this is very striking, by setting before himself a vast program of apostolic action to be gradually realized; for we know that, on the contrary, his mind was full of the idea of the approaching end of the world which was to have left him but little time for great exploits. Very delicate and fragile of body though he was, and constantly afflicted by infirmities which several times brought him to the point of death, he yet possessed an incredible energy of soul which was for ever receiving fresh vigor from his lively faith in the infallible words of Christ, and in His Divine promises. Then again, he counted with unlimited confidence on the supernatural force given by God to the Church for the successful accomplishment of her divine mission in the world. The constant aim of his life, as shown in all his words and works, was, therefore, this: to preserve in himself, and to stimulate in others this same lively faith and confidence, doing all the good possible at the moment in expectation of the Divine judgment.

6. And this produced in him the fixed resolve to adopt for the salvation of all the abundant wealth of supernatural means given by God to His Church, such as the infallible teaching of revealed truth, and the preaching of the same teaching in the whole world, and the sacraments which have the power of infusing or increasing the life of the soul, and the grace of prayer in the name of Christ which assures heavenly protection. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

There were great similarities between Pope Saint Gregory the Great and the pope who memorialized him in Iucunda Sane as both Successors of Saint Peter used the authority that had been given to them to govern Holy Mother Church with firmness despite their own deep and abiding humility. Both fought against heresies and issued firm condemnations of actions and movements contrary to the Holy Faith. Pope Saint Gregory the Great sought to establish the Catholic City as the foundation of world order and Pope Saint Pius X sought to restore that same Catholic City as the only foundation of such order after it had been under attack by enemies Christ the King both inside and outside of Holy Mother Church.

Indeed, Pope Saint Pius X was making it clear early in his pontificate that he was going to use the example of energetic service and firm governance offered by Pope Saint Gregory the Great to deal with the problems he would have to confront with prophetic clarity and abiding charity.  Quite unlike the conciliar “popes,” each of whom have made their accommodations to error and falsehood as having “elements of truth” capable of producing good fruit for “peace among men” in the building of a better and more “just” world according to Judeo-Masonic naturalistic principles, Pope Saint Pius X held up Pope Saint Gregory the Great to document the truth that the Catholic Church will remain after kingdoms, empires, errors and falsehoods all pass away as she is indefectible in her essence:

7. These memories, Venerable Brethren, are a source of unspeakable comfort to Us. When We glance around from the walls of the Vatican We find that like Gregory, and perhaps with even more reason than he, We have grounds for fear, with so many storms gathering on every side, with so many hostile forces massed and advancing against Us, and at the same time so utterly deprived are We of all human aid to ward off the former and to help us to meet the shock of the latter. But when We consider the place on which Our feet rest and on which this Pontifical See is rooted, We feel Ourself perfectly safe on the rock of Holy Church. “For who does not know,” wrote St. Gregory to the Patriarch Eulogius of Alexandria, “that Holy Church stands on the solidity of the Prince of the Apostles, who got his name from his firmness, for he was called Peter from the word rock? (Registr. vii. 37 (40)). Supernatural force has never during the flight of ages been found wanting in the Church, nor have Christ’s promises failed; these remain today just as they were when they brought consolation to Gregory’s heart-nay, they are endowed with even greater force for Us after having stood the test of centuries and so many changes of circumstances and events.

8. Kingdoms and empires have passed away; peoples once renowned for their history and civilization have disappeared; time and again the nations, as though overwhelmed by the weight of years, have fallen asunder; while the Church, indefectible in her essence, united by ties indissoluble with her heavenly Spouse, is here to-day radiant with eternal youth, strong with the same primitive vigor with which she came from the Heart of Christ dead upon the Cross. Men powerful in the world have risen up against her. They have disappeared, and she remains. Philosophical systems without number, of every form and every kind, rose up against her, arrogantly vaunting themselves her masters, as though they had at last destroyed the doctrine of the Church, refuted the dogmas of her faith, proved the absurdity of her teachings. But those systems, one after another, have passed into books of history, forgotten, bankrupt; while from the Rock of Peter the light of truth shines forth as brilliantly as on the day when Jesus first kindled it on His appearance in the world, and fed it with His Divine words: “Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass” (Matth. xxiv. 35).

9. We, strengthened by this faith, firmly established on this rock, realizing to the full all the heavy duties that the Primacy imposes on Us-but also all the vigor that comes to Us from the Divine Will — calmly wait until all the voices be scattered to the winds that now shout around Us proclaiming that the Church has gone beyond her time, that her doctrines are passed away for ever, that the day is at hand when she will be condemned either to accept the tenets of a godless science and civilization or to disappear from human society. Yet at the same time We cannot but remind all, great and small, as Pope St. Gregory did, of the absolute necessity of having recourse to this Church in order to have eternal salvation, to follow the right road of reason, to feed on the truth, to obtain peace and even happiness in this life. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

As we know all too sadly, the day is at hand when what most people in the world think is the Catholic Church but is in fact her counterfeit ape has accepted the “tenets of a godless science” and is headed by men who believe that there is salvation outside of the Catholic Church and that even hardened sinners who celebrate their sins publicly and have absolutely no contrition for them can attain eternal salvation. The only path to true happiness in this life as a preparation for the unsurpassed joys of the next is to be in the Catholic Church and nowhere else.

Pope Saint Gregory the Great sought to advance the common temporal good in light of man’s Last End—the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven—by insisting on the “absolute necessity of a perfect harmony between the two powers, ecclesiastical and civil, each being by the will of God called to sustain the other”:

10. Wherefore, to use the words of the Holy Pontiff, “Turn your steps towards this unshaken rock upon which Our Savior founded the Universal Church, so that the path of him who is sincere of heart may not be lost in devious windings” (Reg. viii. 24, ad Sabin. episcop.). It is only the charity of the Church and union with her which “unite what is divided, restore order where there is confusion, temper inequalities, fill up imperfections” (Registr. v. 58 (53) ad Virgil. episcop.). It is to be firmly held “that nobody can rightly govern in earthly things, unless he knows how to treat divine things, and that the peace of States depends upon the universal peace of the Church” (Registr. v. 37 (20) ad Mauric. Aug.). Hence the absolute necessity of a perfect harmony between the two powers, ecclesiastical and civil, each being by the will of God called to sustain the other. For, “power over all men was given from heaven that those who aspire to do well may be aided, that the path to heaven may be made broader, and that earthly sovereignty may be handmaid to heavenly sovereignty” (Registr. iii. 61(65) ad Mauric. Aug.).

11. From these principles was derived that unconquerable firmness shown by Gregory, which We, with the help of God, will study to imitate, resolved to defend at all costs the rights and prerogatives of which the Roman Pontificate is the guardian and the defender before God and man. But it was the same Gregory who wrote to the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch: When the rights of the Church are in question, “we must show, even by our death, that we do not, through love of some private interest of our own want anything contrary to the common weal” (Registr. v. 41). And to the Emperor Maurice: “He who through vainglory raises his neck against God Almighty and against the statutes of the Fathers, shall not bend my neck to him, not even with the cutting of swords, as I trust in the same God Almighty” (Registr. v. 37). And to the Deacon Sabinian: “I am ready to die rather than permit that the Church degenerate in my days. And you know well my ways, that I am long-suffering; but when I decide not to bear any longer, I face danger with a joyful soul” (Registr. v. 6 (iv. 47)).

12. Such were the fundamental maxims which the Pontiff Gregory constantly proclaimed, and men listened to him. And thus, with Princes and peoples docile to his words, the world regained true salvation, and put itself on the path of a civilization which was noble and fruitful in blessings in proportion as it was founded on the incontrovertible dictates of reason and moral discipline, and derived its force from truth divinely revealed and from the maxims of the Gospel. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

Everyone who holds civil office must yield to Holy Mother Church on all that pertains to the good of souls without any exception whatsoever. Very few people recognize or accept this today, including many compelled to defend President Donald John Trump at every turn no matter what he does and those whose irrational hatred of the forty-fifth president cause them to use any means whatsoever to destroy him, his administration, his family and anyone who has ever had anything to do with him, and even many within fully Catholic circles believe that there is something short of Catholicism that can retard the evils of the day. This is not even to mention the fact that the conciliar “popes,” including Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and Jorge Mario Bergoglio, have taught that the secular state that is divorced and dissevered from “religion” is the model. “John Paul II” the Non-Great called this “healthy secularity.” Pope Saint Pius X reminded us that Pope Saint Gregory the Great laid an ax to this and related heresies:

13. But in those days the people, albeit rude, ignorant, and still destitute of all civilization, were eager for life, and this no one could give except Christ, through the Church, who “came that they may have life and have it more abundantly” (John x. 10). And truly they had life and had it abundantly, precisely because as no other life but the supernatural life of souls could come from the Church, this includes in itself and gives additional vigor to all the energies of life, even in the natural order. “If the root be holy so are the branches,” said St. Paul to the Gentiles, “and thou being a wild olive art ingrafted in them, and art made partaker of the root and of the fatness of the olive-tree (Rom. xi. 16, 17).

14. To-day, on the contrary, although the world enjoys a light so full of Christian civilization and in this respect cannot for a moment be compared with the times of Gregory, yet it seems as though it were tired of that life, which has been and still is the chief and often the sole fount of so many blessings — and not merely past but present blessings. And not only does this useless branch cut itself off from the trunk, as happened in other times when heresies and schisms arose, but it first lays the ax to the root of the tree, which is the Church, and strives to dry up its vital sap that its ruin may be the surer and that it may never blossom again.

15. In this error, which is the chief one of our time and the source whence all the others spring, lies the origin of so much loss of eternal salvation among men, and of all the ruins affecting religion which we continue to lament, and of the many others which we still fear will happen if the evil be not remedied. For all supernatural order is denied, and, as a consequence, the divine intervention in the order of creation and in the government of the world and in the possibility of miracles; and when all these are taken away the foundations of the Christian religion are necessarily shaken. Men even go so far as to impugn the arguments for the existence of God, denying with unparalleled audacity and against the first principles of reason the invincible force of the proof which from the effects ascends to their cause, that is God, and to the notion of His infinite attributes. “For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made: his eternal power also and divinity” (Rom. i. 20). The way is thus opened to other most grievous errors, equally repugnant to right reason and pernicious to good morals.

16. The gratuitous negation of the supernatural principles, proper to knowledge falsely so called, has actually become the postulate of a historical criticism equally false. Everything that relates in any way to the supernatural order, either as belonging to it, constituting it, presupposing it, or merely finding its explanation in it, is erased without further investigation from the pages of history. Such are the Divinity of Jesus Christ, His Incarnation through the operation of the Holy Ghost, His Resurrection by His own power, and in general all the dogmas of our faith. Science once placed on this false road, there is no law of criticism to hold it back; and it cancels at its own caprice from the holy books everything that does not suit it or that it believes to be opposed to the pre-established theses it wishes to demonstrate. For take away the supernatural order and the story of the origin of the Church must be built on quite another foundation, and hence the innovators handle as they list the monuments of history, forcing them to say what they wish them to say, and not what the authors of those monuments meant. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

Roman paganism had been laid to ruin by the barbarians. The barbarians of conciliarism have laid to ruins the wellsprings of the superabundance of Sanctifying Grace that is necessary for men to know, love and serve God as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church and have taught heretical doctrines that have corrupted morals and that correspond entirely those taught and advanced by the naturalists who hold such sway in the world today as they seek to silence all dissenting voices. There is a common cause between barbarians such as Jorge Mario Bergoglio and George Soros. There was no such common cause between Pope Saint Gregory the Great, who sought to win the conversion of barbarians, and the false currents that he knew could be vanquished only by a firm defense of the Holy Faith.

It is no exaggeration to state that Pope Saint Pius X was describing a world one hundred fifteen years ago that had devolved into the madness of atheism, agnosticism, rationalism, naturalism, nihilism, gnosticism, Protestantism, liberalism, religious indifferentism, utilitarianism, socialism, Judeo-Calvinist capitalism, nationalism, militarism, racialism, imperialism, evolutionism and a welter of other errors designed to give meaning to human life and to “solve” the problems of the world by denying—or at least being indifferent to—Original Sin and Our Lord’s Incarnation, Nativity, Hidden Years, Public Life and Ministry and Passion, Death and Ascension into Heaven.  In other words, everything but Catholicism could serve as the foundation for personal happiness and social order. Thus, Pope Saint Pius X was teaching us that the world of order realized during Christendom largely as a consequence of the work of Pope Saint Gregory the Great was in danger of collapse despite outward appearances to the contrary.

Saint Benedict of Nursia, who feast will be celebrated on Thursday, March 21, 2024, kept learning alive during the barbaric invasions. Pope Saint Gregory the Great was a direct beneficiary of Saint Benedict’s patrimony and was an advocate for true learning founded in the science of the Holy Faith. Pope Saint Pius X understood the difference between the true learning that is grounded in a knowledge of supernatural truths and Modernity’s pseudo-education:

17. Many are captivated by the great show of erudition which is held out before them, and by the apparently convincing force of the proofs adduced, so that they either lose the faith or feel that it is greatly shaken in them. There are many too, firm in the faith, who accuse critical science of being destructive, while in itself it is innocent and a sure element of investigation when rightly applied. Both the former and the latter fail to see that they start from a false hypothesis, that is to say, from science falsely so-called, which logically forces them to conclusions equally false. For given a false philosophical principle everything deduced from it is vitiated. But these errors will never be effectively refuted, unless by bringing about a change of front, that is to say, unless those in error be forced to leave the field of criticism in which they consider themselves firmly entrenched for the legitimate field of philosophy through the abandonment of which they have fallen into their errors.

18. Meanwhile, however, it is painful to have to apply to men not lacking in acumen and application the rebuke addressed by St. Paul to those who fail to rise from earthly things to the things that are invisible: “They became vain in their thoughts and their foolish heart was darkened; for professing themselves to be wise they became fools” (Rom. i. 21, 22). And surely foolish is the only name for him who consumes all his intellectual forces in building upon sand. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

We can never make any compromises with error.

No compromises with Modernism.

No compromises with Judeo-Masonic naturalism.

No compromises with Americanism.

No compromises with Zionism.

No compromises with the rot of contemporary culture and the degrading nature of contemporary fashions that violate immutable standards of modesty and are incentives to sins against holy purity.

Pope Saint Gregory the Great was uncompromising in his own defense of the Holy Faith as the only foundation of social order. So was Pope Saint Pius X.

Unlike Angelo Roncalli/John XIII, who used his opening address at the “Second” Vatican Council on October 11, 1962, the Feast of the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to assert that there was no need for the council fathers to condemn errors as errors just kind of “disappear” over time, Popes Saints Gregory the Great and Pius X knew that error had to be opposed firmly. The Catholic Church does not favor an “opening to the world” and its anti-Incarnational errors. She seeks to convert everyone in the world to the true Faith so that everything in the world will remind us of the majesty of the Most Blessed Trinity and serve as an incentive to the pursuit of the Heavenly City, where alone we can find our true permanent dwelling.

Emphasizing this point, Pope Saint Pius X explained that the mere use of civil force cannot stop the spread of immorality as vice springs forth from the sinful desires of the hearts of men, which is why Holy Mother church must be vigilant to call the wayward to repentance and amendment of life:

19. Not less deplorable are the injuries which accrue from this negation to the moral life of individuals and of civil society. Take away the principle that there is anything divine outside this visible world, and you take away all check upon unbridled passions even of the lowest and most shameful kind, and the minds that become slaves to them riot in disorders of every species. “God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonor their own bodies among themselves” (Rom. i. 24). You are well aware, Venerable Brethren, how truly the plague of depravity triumphs on all sides, and how the civil authority wherever it fails to have recourse to the means of help offered by the supernatural order, finds itself quite unequal to the task of checking it. Nay, authority will never be able to heal other evils as long as it forgets or denies that all power comes from God. The only check a government can command in this case is that of force; but force cannot be constantly employed, nor is it always available yet the people continue to be undermined as by a secret disease, they become discontented with everything, they proclaim the right to act as they please, they stir up rebellions, they provoke revolutions, often of extreme violence, in the State; they overthrow all rights human and divine. Take away God, and all respect for civil laws, all regard for even the most necessary institutions disappears; justice is scouted; the very liberty that belongs to the law of nature is trodden underfoot; and men go so far as to destroy the very structure of the family, which is the first and firmest foundation of the social structure. The result is that in these days hostile to Christ, it has become more difficult to apply the powerful remedies which the Redeemer has put into the hands of the Church in order to keep the peoples within the lines of duty.

20. Yet there is no salvation for the world but in Christ: “For there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we may be saved” (Acts iv. 12). To Christ then we must return. At His feet we must prostrate ourselves to hear from His divine mouth the words of eternal life, for He alone can show us the way of regeneration, He alone teach us the truth, He alone restore life to us. It is He who has said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John xiv. 16). Men have once more attempted to work here below without Him, they have begun to build up the edifice after rejecting the corner stone, as the Apostle Peter rebuked the executioners of Jesus for doing. And lo! the pile that has been raised again crumbles and falls upon the heads of the builders, crushing them. But Jesus remains for ever the corner stone of human society, and again the truth becomes apparent that without Him there is no salvation: “This is the stone which has been rejected by you, the builders, and which has become the head of the corner, neither is there salvation in any other” (Acts iv. 11, 12).

21. From all this you will easily see, Venerable Brethren, the absolute necessity imposed upon every one of us to receive with all the energy of our souls and with all the means at our disposal, this supernatural life in every branch of society — in the poor working-man who earns his morsel of bread by the sweat of his brow, from morning to night, and in the great ones of the earth who preside over the destiny of nations. We must, above all else, have recourse to prayer, both public and private, to implore the mercies of the Lord and His powerful assistance. “Lord, save us — we perish” (Matthew viii. 25), we must repeat like the Apostles when buffeted by the storm. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

The passages above are very similar to Pope Leo XIII’s Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900, that reminded us about the futility of seeking a just social order in a merely secular system of administration. Men and their societies must be lost without Christ the King and His true Church, and this is why the world is in such a mess today. Large numbers of ignoramuses, exemplified best today by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is all of twenty-nine years of age, are in a revolution against the established order and seek a remedy through “socialism” even though most of the unwashed (a statement that is all too true literally in many instances) masses have no idea what socialism is except perhaps a vague, inchoate belief that “equality”—whatever that is—will prevail. Well, this is true. “Equality” does prevail in socialism, which makes everyone equally poor and equally enslaved to the civil state and to the masters of commerce, banking, industry and communication.

As has been noted on so many other occasions on this site, however, socialism, including its Marxist-Leninist variation, is the logical consequence of Judeo-Calvinism’s dehumanizing system of profit-at-any-price, including driving workers to early graves by considering them units of production and forcing them into health insurance programs run by today’s modern Aztecs intent on killing off the unproductive and of carving out the vital bodily organs of “prime donors” among children, adolescents and young adults. Catholics are neither Judeo-Calvinist capitalists no socialists. Catholics use the social encyclical letters of our true popes to use private property responsibility with a view to the good of souls and not as dictated by the atheistic or anti-Theistic peddlers of ignorance such as Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.,Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernard John Sanders, Elizabeth “Pow Wow the Indian Girl” Warren, Julian Castro, Robert Francis O’Rourke, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Merrick Garland, and so many others in public life today.

What makes this so difficult to understand is that, quite unlike the example set by Pope Saints Gregory the Great and Pius X, the current false claimant to the Throne of Saint Peter is in league witih the above-named ignoramuses as he does the bidding of the atheistic Jew named George Soros, who is out to silence all dissent from his Anti-Christian schemes of total control by world governance bodies that are beholden to him and staffed by his minions (see Soros Funded Social Media Censorship Aims to Silence all dissentrers of hard left agenda.)

It’s Catholicism or the abyss.

Nothing in-between.

Pope Saint Pius X continued to describe Pope Saint Gregory the Great’s admonition to bishops that was discussed at the beginning of this commentary:

22. But this is not enough. Gregory rebukes the bishop who, through love of spiritual solitude and prayer, fails to go out into the battlefield to combat strenuously for the cause of the Lord: “The name of bishop, which he bears, is an empty one.” And rightly so, for men’s intellects are to be enlightened by continual preaching of the truth, and errors are to be efficaciously refuted by the principles of true and solid philosophy and theology, and by all the means provided by the genuine progress of historical investigation. It is still more necessary to inculcate properly on the minds of all the moral maxims taught by Jesus Christ, so that everybody may learn to conquer himself, to curb the passions of the mind, to stifle pride, to live in obedience to authority, to love justice, to show charity towards all, to temper with Christian love the bitterness of social inequalities, to detach the heart from the goods of the world, to live contented with the state in which Providence has placed us, while striving to better it by the fulfillment of our duties, to thirst after the future life in the hope of eternal reward. But, above all, is it necessary that these principles be instilled and made to penetrate into the heart, so that true and solid piety may strike root there, and all, both as men and as Christians, may recognize by their acts, as well as by their words, the duties of their state and have recourse with filial confidence to the Church and her ministers to obtain from them pardon for their sins, to receive the strengthening grace of the Sacraments, and to regulate their lives according to the laws of Christianity.

23. With these chief duties of the spiritual ministry it is necessary to unite the charity of Christ, and when this moves us there will be nobody in affliction who will not be consoled by us, no tears that will not be dried by our hands, no need that will not be relieved by us. To the exercise of this charity let us dedicate ourselves wholly; let all our own affairs give way before it, let our personal interests and convenience be set aside for it, making ourselves “all things to all men” (I Cor. ix. 22), to gain all men to the Lord, giving up our very life itself, after the example of Christ: “The good shepherd gives his life for his sheep (John x. 11).

24. These precious admonitions abound in the pages which the Pontiff St. Gregory has left written, and they are expressed with far greater force in the manifold examples of his admirable life. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

25. Now since all this springs necessarily both from the nature of the principles of Christian revelation, and from the intrinsic properties which Our Apostolate should have, you see clearly, Venerable Brethren, how mistaken are those who think they are doing service to the Church, and producing fruit for the salvation of souls, when by a kind of prudence of the flesh they show themselves liberal in concessions to science falsely so-called, under the fatal illusion that they are thus able more easily to win over those in error, but really with the continual danger of being themselves lost. The truth is one, and it cannot be halved; it lasts for ever, and is not subject to the vicissitudes of the times. “Jesus Christ, today and yesterday, and the same for ever” (Hebr. xiii. 8). (Pope Saint Pius X, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

Pope Saint Pius X, of course, was condemning those bishops who were making concessions to Modernism and to the principles of The Sillon that he would condemn six years later in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 12, 1950. Our last truly canonized Roman Pontiff, however, was, quite prophetically, condemning the whole ethos of the “Second” Vatican Council and the magisteria of the postconciliar “popes” that is founded in an embrace of error and is “many-sided beauties in which subsist some elements of truth” but has produced nothing but a wreckage of souls and at least two full generations of Catholics who believe the true Catholic Faith to be something invented by “traditionalists,” not the absolute truth of Our Lord, who is the same “today, yesterday and forever.” Many younger Catholics today have open hostility to the unchanging and unchangeable Catholic Faith as they have been taught by those steeped in heresy and error who commit sacrilege upon sacrilege every time they stage the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo worship service.

There is no reason, though, to wonder why most of the faux “bishops” within the counterfeit church of conciliarism do not speak out about the advance of moral evils in the world, up to and including silence about the support by Catholic public officials for the killing of babies after birth, as even those who “conservatives” among them who might be inclined to do lack the grace of state as they are not true priests or bishops. Many more others, however, are in league with the merchants of evil and are concerned about the “green new deal,” and are not in the least concerned about the sanctification and salvation of souls. Such are the differences between the false bishops of Modernism and true bishops such as Pope Saints Gregory the Great and Pius X, who also condemned those bishops of his own day who were concerned more about material well-being than for the good of the soul:

26. And so too are all they seriously mistaken who, occupying themselves with the welfare of the people, and especially upholding the cause of the lower classes, seek to promote above all else the material well-being of the body and of life, but are utterly silent about their spiritual welfare and the very serious duties which their profession as Christians enjoins upon them. They are not ashamed to conceal sometimes, as though with a veil, certain fundamental maxims of the Gospel, for fear lest otherwise the people refuse to hear and follow them. It will certainly be the part of prudence to proceed gradually in laying down the truth, when one has to do with men completely strangers to us and completely separated from God. “Before using the steel, let the wounds be felt with a light hand,” as Gregory said (Registr. v. 44 (18) ad Joannem episcop.). But even this carefulness would sink to mere prudence of the flesh, were it proposed as the rule of constant and everyday action — all the more since such a method would seem not to hold in due account that Divine Grace which sustains the sacerdotal ministry and which is given not only to those who exercise this ministry, but to all the faithful of Christ in order that our words and our action may find an entrance into their heart. Gregory did not at all understand this prudence, either in the preaching of the Gospel, or in the many wonderful works undertaken by him to relieve misery. He did constantly what the Apostles had done, for they, when they went out for the first time into the world to bring into it the name of Christ, repeated the saying: “We preach Christ crucified, a scandal for the Jews, a folly for the Gentiles” (I Cor. i. 23). If ever there was a time in which human prudence seemed to offer the only expedient for obtaining something in a world altogether unprepared to receive doctrines so new, so repugnant to human passions, so opposed to the civilization, then at its most flourishing period, of the Greeks and the Romans, that time was certainly the epoch of the preaching of the faith. But the Apostles disdained such prudence, because they understood well the precept of God: “It pleased God by the foolishness of our preaching to save them that believe (I Cor. i. 21). And as it ever was, so it is today, this foolishness “to them that are saved, that is, to us, is the power of God” (I Cor. i. 18). The scandal of the Crucified will ever furnish us in the future, as it has done in the past, with the most potent of all weapons; now as of yore in that sign we shall find victory.

27. But, Venerable Brethren, this weapon will lose much of its efficacy or be altogether useless in the hands of men not accustomed to the interior life with Christ, not educated in the school of true and solid piety, not thoroughly inflamed with zeal for the glory of God and for the propagation of His kingdom. So keenly did Gregory feel this necessity that he used the greatest care in creating bishops and priests animated by a great desire for the divine glory and for the true welfare of souls. And this was the intent he had before him in his book on the Pastoral Rule, wherein are gathered together the laws regulating the formation of the clergy and the government of bishops — laws most suitable not for his times only but for our own. Like an “Argus full of light,” says his biographer, “he moved all round the eyes of his pastoral solicitude through all the extent of the world” (Joann. Diac., lib ii. c. 55), to discover and correct the failings and the negligence of the clergy. Nay, he trembled at the very thought that barbarism and immortality might obtain a footing in the life of the clergy, and he was deeply moved and gave himself no peace whenever he learned of some infraction of the disciplinary laws of the Church, and immediately administered admonition and correction, threatening canonical penalties on transgressors, sometimes immediately applying these penalties himself, and again removing the unworthy from their offices without delay and without human respect.

28. Moreover, he inculcated the maxims which we frequently find in his writings in such form as this: “In what frame of mind does one enter upon the office of mediator between God and man who is not conscious of being familiar with grace through a meritorious life?” (Reg. Past. i. 10). “U passion lives in his actions, with what presumption does he hasten to cure the wound, when he wears a scar on his very face?” (Reg. Past. i. 9). What fruit can be expected for the salvation of souls if the apostles “combat in their lives what they preach in their words?” (Reg. Past i. 2). “Truly he cannot remove the delinquencies of others who is himself ravaged by the same” (Reg. Past. i. 11). (Pope Saint Pius X, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

Well, here one finds the entirety of the approach by taken by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his fellow green-means-red as-Lenin Square comrades such as Blase Cupich, Joseph Tobin, the disgraced Donald Wuerl, Oscar Andres Maradiaga Rodriguez, Reinhard Marx, Walter Kasper, James Martin and countless others condemned in advance by Pope Saint Gregory the Great and by the pope who would confront Modernist, Pope Saint Pius X. Jorge Mario Bergoglio desires “bishops” and presbyters who “accompany” hardened sinners, not those who want to convert them and, quite unlike Pope Saint Gregory the Great, he has no problem with “bishops” and presbyters who have been and who continue to be unchaste:

29. The picture of the true priest, as Gregory understands and describes him, is the man “who, dying to all passions of the flesh, already lives spiritually; who has no thought for the prosperity of the world; who has no fear of adversity; who desires only internal things; who does not permit himself to desire what belongs to others but is liberal of his own; who is all bowels of compassion and inclines to forgiveness, but in forgiveness never swerves unduly from the perfection of righteousness; who never commits unlawful actions, but deplores as though they were his own the unlawful actions of others; who with all affection of the heart compassionates the weakness of others, and rejoices in the prosperity of his neighbor as in his own profit; who in all his doings so renders himself a model for others as to have nothing whereof to be ashamed, at least, as regards his external actions; who studies so to live that he may be able to water the parched hearts of his neighbors with the waters of doctrine; who knows through the use of prayer and through his own experience that he can obtain from the Lord what he asks” (Reg. Past. i. 10).

30. How much thought, therefore, Venerable Brethren, must the Bishop seriously take with himself and in the presence of God before laying hands on young levites! “Let him never dare, either as an act of favor to anybody or in response to petitions made to him, to promote any one to sacred orders whose life and actions do not furnish a guarantee of worthiness” (Registr. v 63 (58) ad universos episcopos per Hellad.) With what deliberation should he reflect before entrusting the work of the apostolate to newly ordained priests! If they be not duly tried under the vigilant guardianship of more prudent priests, if there be not abundant evidence of their morality, of their inclination for spiritual exercises, of their prompt obedience to all the norms of action which are suggested by ecclesiastical custom or proved by long experience, or imposed by those whom “the Holy Ghost has placed as bishops to rule the Church of God” (Acts xx. 28), they will exercise the sacerdotal ministry not for the salvation but for the ruin of the Christian people. For they will provoke discord, and excite rebellion, more or less tacit, thus offering to the world the sad spectacle of something like division amongst us, whereas in truth these deplorable incidents are but the pride and unruliness of a few. Oh! let those who stir up discord be altogether removed from every office. Of such apostles the Church has no need; they are not apostles of Jesus Christ Crucified but of themselves.

31. We seem to see still present before Our eyes the Holy Pontiff Gregory at the Lateran Council, surrounded by a great number of bishops from all parts of the world. Oh, how fruitful is the exhortation that falls from his lips on the duties of the clergy! How his heart is consumed with zeal! His words are as lightnings rending the perverse, as scourges striking the indolent, as flames of divine love gently enfolding the most fervent. Read that wonderful homily of Gregory, Venerable Brethren, and have it read and meditated by your clergy, especially during the annual retreat (Hom. in Evang. i. 17). (Pope Saint Pius X, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

Zeal for souls is not lacking among some “conservative” presbyters within the conciliar structures who do not realize that they have not been validly ordained nor that they are in a false religious sect. However, Jorge Mario Bergoglio wants “bishops” and presbyters after his own wretched example, something that he has made very, very clear by means of the men he has elevated to his the conciliar college of “cardinals” and those who chooses to keep close by his side at the Casa Santa Marta.

Bergoglio is a crass man who loves so-called “popular culture,” including the immoral “tango” dance that was condemned by Pope Saint Pius X. He wants presbyters to be formed who are accepting of the crassness and vulgarity of our times, not men after the priestly heart of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, who provided us with the very means of modern musical notation that is meant to uplift the soul to God and to the glories of Heaven, not to agitate men and to arouse their lower passions within them:

32. Among other things, with unspeakable sorrow he exclaims: “Lo, the world is full of priests, but rare indeed it is to find a worker in the hands of God; we do indeed assume the priestly office, but the obligation of the office we do not fulfill” (Hom. in Evang. n. 3). What force the Church would have to-day could she count a worker in every priest! What abundant fruit would the supernatural life of the Church produce in souls were it efficaciously promoted by all. Gregory succeeded in his own times in strenuously stimulating this spirit of energetic action, and such was the impulse given by him that the same spirit was kept alive during the succeeding ages. The whole mediaeval period bears what may be called the Gregorian imprint; almost everything it had indeed came to it from the Pontiff — the rule of ecclesiastical government, the manifold phases of charity and philanthropy in its social institutions, the principles of the most perfect Christian asceticism and of monastic life, the arrangement of the liturgy and the art of sacred music. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

Pope Saint Pius X then explained that he was going to devote his own efforts to a renewal of Sacred Music and expressed his hope that Holy Mother Church would promote true progress in the sciences and in culture, explaining that the times had changed in the 1,300 years since the death of Pope Saint Gregory the Great but that Holy Mother Church’s mission to promote true Christian civilization is unchanging:

33. The times are indeed greatly changed. But, as We have more than once repeated, nothing is changed in the life of the Church. From her Divine Founder she has inherited the virtue of being able to supply at all times, however much they may differ, all that is required not only for the spiritual welfare of souls, which is the direct object of her mission, but also everything that aids progress in true civilization, for this follows as a natural consequence of that same mission.

34. For it cannot be but that the truths of the supernatural order, of which the Church is the depository, promote also everything that is true, good, and beautiful in the order of nature, and this the more efficaciously in proportion as these truths are traced to the supreme principle of all truth, goodness and beauty, which is God.

35. Human science gains greatly from revelation, for the latter opens out new horizons and makes known sooner other truths of the natural order, and because it opens the true road to investigation and keeps it safe from errors of application and of method. Thus does the lighthouse show many things they otherwise would not see, while it points out the rocks on which the vessel would suffer shipwreck.

36. And since, for our moral discipline, the Divine Redeemer proposes as our supreme model of perfection His heavenly Father (Matthew v. 48), that is, the Divine goodness itself, who can fail to see the mighty impulse thence accruing to the ever more perfect observance of the natural law inscribed in our hearts, and consequently to the greater welfare of the individual, the family, and universal society? The ferocity of the barbarians was thus transformed to gentleness, woman was freed from subjection, slavery was repressed, order was restored in the due and reciprocal independence upon one another of the various classes of society, justice was recognized, the true liberty of souls was proclaimed, and social and domestic peace assured.

37. Finally, the arts modeled on the supreme exemplar of all beauty which is God Himself, from whom is derived all the beauty to be found in nature, are more securely withdrawn from vulgar concepts and more efficaciously rise towards the ideal, which is the life of all art. And how fruitful of good has been the principle of employing them in the service of divine worship and of offering to the Lord everything that is deemed to be worthy of him, by reason of its richness, its goodness, its elegance of form. This principle has created sacred art, which became and still continues to be the foundation of all profane art. We have recently touched upon this in a special motu proprio, when speaking of the restoration of the Roman Chant according to the ancient tradition and of sacred music. And the same rules are applicable to the other arts, each in its own sphere, so that what has been said of the Chant may also be said of painting, sculpture, architecture; and towards all these most noble creations of genius the Church has been lavish of inspiration and encouragement. The whole human race, fed on this sublime ideal, raises magnificent temples, and here in the House of God, as in its own house, lifts up its heart to heavenly things in the midst of the treasures of all beautiful art, with the majesty of liturgical ceremony, and to the accompaniment of the sweetest of song.

38. All these benefits, We repeat, the action of the Pontiff St. Gregory succeeded in attaining in his own time and in the centuries that followed; and these, too, it will be possible to attain to-day, by virtue of the intrinsic efficacy of the principles which should guide us and of the means we have at our disposal, while preserving with all zeal the good which by the grace of God is still left us and “restoring in Christ” (Ephes. i. 10) all that has unfortunately lapsed from the right rule. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iucunda Sane, March 12, 1904.)

Pope Saint Pius X tried to restore all things in Christ. However, even his work of restoring Roman Chant according “to the ancient tradition and of sacred music” was rent asunder in but few years more than half a century after his death on August 20, 1914. Banality replaced sacrality. The profanity of the rot composed by the “St. Louis Jesuits” and other like “contemporary” liturgical composers proliferated, obliterating the memory of Holy Mother’s glorious liturgical history in which Pope Saint Gregory the Great played such a prominent role:  

Essentially, the Missal of Pius V is the Gregorian Sacramentary; that again is formed from the Gelasian book, which depends upon the Leonine collection. We find prayers of our Canon in the treatise de Sacramentis and allusions to it in the [Fourth] Century. So the Mass goes back, without essential change, to the age when it first developed out of the oldest Liturgy of all. It is still redolent of that Liturgy, of the days when Caesar ruled the world, and thought he could stamp out the Faith of Christ, when our fathers met together before dawn and sang a hymn to Christ as God. The final result of our enquiry is that, in spite of some unresolved problems, in spite of later changes there is not in Christendom another rite so venerable as ours. (The Mass – A Study of the Roman Liturgy. Adrian Fortescue. Longmans, Green & Co. London. 1950. p. 213)

We must pray to Pope Saint Gregory the Great every day for that which Pope Saint Pius X devoted his entire pontificate: the restoration of all things in Christ. That day will come, although it is likely to be the case that some of us, including this writer, will not be alive when it happens. Nevertheless, however, we should pray perseveringly to Pope Saint Gregory the Great, by whose tomb under the altar named in his honor in the Basilica of Saint Peter I was privileged to many times during each of my six trips to Rome (1984, 1987, 1993, 1995, 1996, 2005).

Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., wrote the following in The Liturgical Year about our sainted pontiff: 

Among all the pastors whom our Lord Jesus Christ has placed, as His vicegerents, over the universal Church, there is not one whose merits and renown have surpassed those of the holy Pope, whose feast we keep to-day. His name is Gregory, which signifies watchfulness; his surname is ‘the Great,’ and he was in possession of that title, when God sent the Seventh Gregory, the glorious Hildebrand, to govern His Church. 

In recounting the glories of this illustrious Pontiff, it is but natural we should begin with his zeal for the services of the Church. The Roman liturgy, which owes to him some of its finest hymns, may be considered as his work, at least in he sense, that it is he who collected together and classified the prayers and rites dawn up by his predecessors, and reduced them ot the form in which we now have them. He collected also the ancient chants of the Church, and arranged them in accordance with the rules and requirements of the divine Service. Hence it is, that our sacred music, which gives such solemnity to the liturgy, and inspires the soul with respect and evotion during the celebration of the great mysteries of our faith, is known as the Gregorian chant. 

He is, then, the apostle of the liturgy, and this alone would have immortalized his name; but we must look for far greater things from such a Pontiff as Gregory. His name was added to the three, who had hitherto been honoured as the great Doctors of the Latin Church. These three are Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome; who else could be the fourth but Gregory? The Church found in his writings such evidence of his having been guided by the Holy Ghost, such a knowledge of the sacred Scriptures, such a clearer appreciation of the mysteries of faith, and such unction and authority in his teachings, that she gladly welcomed him as a new guide for her children. 

Such was the respect wherewith everything he wrote was treated, that his very letters were preserved as so many precious treasures. This immense correspondence shows us that there was not a country, scarcely even a city of the Christian world, in which the Pontiff had not his watchful eye steadily fixed; that there was not a question, however local or personal, which, if it interested religion, did not excite his zeal and arbitration as the Bishop of the universal Church. If certain writers of modern times had but taken the pains to glance at these letters, written by a Pope of the sixth century, they would never have asserted, as they have, that the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff are based on documents fabricated, as they say, two hundred years after the death of Gregory.  

Throned on the apostolic See, our saint proved himself to be a rightful heir of the apostles, not only as the representative and depositary of their authority, but as a follow-sharer in their missio of calling nations to th true faith. To whom does England owe her having been, for so many ages, the ‘island of saints’? To Gregory, who, touched with compassion for those Angli, of whom, as he playfully said, he would fain Angeli,sent to their island the monk Augustine with forty companions, all of them, as was Gregory himself, children of St. Benedict. The faith had been sown in this land as early as the second century, but it had been trodden down by the invasion of an infidel race. This time the seed fructified, and so rapidly that Gregory lived to see a plentiful harvest. It is beautiful to hear the aged Pontiff speaking with enthusiasm about the results of his English mission. He thus speaks in the twenty-seventh Book of his Morals: ‘Lo! the language of Britain, which could once mutter naught save barbarous sounds, has long since begun to sing, in the divine praises, the Hebrew Alleluia! Lo! that swelling sea is now calm, and saints walk on its waves. The tide of barbarians, which the sword of earthly princes could not keep back, is now hemmed in at the simple bidding of God’s priests.’ 

During the fourteen years that this holy Pope held the place of Peter, he was the object of the admiration of the Christian world, both in the east and in the west. His profound learning, his talent for administration, his position, all tended to make him beloved and respected. But who could describe the virtue of his great soul? That contempt for the world and its riches, which led him to seek obscurity in the cloister; that humility, which made him flee the honours of the papacy, and hide himself in a cave, where, at length, he was miraculously discovered, and God Himself put into his hands the keys of heaven, which he was evidently worthy to hold, because he feared the responsibility; that zeal for the whole flock, of which he considered himself not the master, but the servant, so much so indeed that he assumed the title, which the Popes have ever since retained, of ‘servant of the servants of God’; that charity which took care of the poor throughout the whole world; that ceaseless solicitude, which provided for every calamity, whether public or private; that unruffled sweetness of manner, which he showed to all around him, in spite of the bodily sufferings which never left him during the whole period of his laborious pontificate; that firmness in defending the deposit of the faith, and crushing error wheresoever it showed itself; in a word, that vigilance with regard to discipline, which made itself felt for long ages after in the whole Church? All these services and glorious examples of virtue have endeared our saint to the whole world, and will cause his name to be blessed for all future generations, even to the end of time.  

Let us now read the abridged life of our saint, as given us in the liturgy.

Gregory the Great, a Roman by birth. was son of the senator Gordian. He applied early to the study of philosophy, and was entrusted with the office of Pretor. After his father’s death he built six monasteries in Sicily, and a seventh. under the title of Saint Andrew, in his own house in Rome, near the basi· lica of Saints John and Paul, on the hill Scaurus. In this last named monastery, he embraced the monastic life under the guidance of Hilarion and Maximian, and was, later on, elected abbot. Shortly afterwards, he was created Cardinal-Deacon, and was by Pope Pelagius sent to Constantinople, as legate, to confer with the emperor Constantine. While there, he achieved that celebrated victory over the patriarch Eutychius, who had written against the resurrection of the flesh, maintaining that it would not be a real one. Gregory so convinced him of his error, that the emperor threw his book into the fire. Eutychius himself fell ill not long after, and when he perceived his last hour had come, he took between his fingers the skin of his hand, and said before the many who were there: ‘I believe that we shall all rise in this flesh.’

On his return to Rome, he was chosen Pope, by unanimous consent, for Pelagius had been carried off by the plague. He refused, as long as it was possible, the honour thus offered him. He disguised himself and hid himself in a cave; but he was discovered by a pillar of fire shining over the place, and was consecrated at Saint Peter’s.  As Pontiff, he was an example to his successors by his learning and holiness of life. He every day admitted pilgrims to his table, among whom he received, on one occasion, an angel, and, on another, the Lord of angels, who wore the garb of a pilgrim.  He charitably provided for the poor, both in and out of Rome, and kept a list of them. He re-established the Catholic faith in several places where it had fallen into decay. Thus, he put down the Donatists in Africa, and the Arians in Spain; and drove the Agnoites out of Alexandria. He refused to give the pallium to Syagrius, bishop of Autun, until he should have expelled the Neophyte heretics from Gaul.  He induced the Goths to abandon the Arian heresy. He sent Augustine and other monks into Britain, and, by these learned and saintly men, converted that island to the faith of Christ Jesus; so that Bede truly calls him the Apostle of England.  He checked the haughty pretensions of John, the patriarch of Constantinople, who had arrogated to himself the title of bishop of the universal Church. He obliged the emperor Mauritius to revoke the decree, whereby he had forbidden any soldier to become a monk.

He enriched the Church with many most holy practices and laws. In a Council held at St. Peter’s he passed several decrees. Among these, the following may be mentioned: That in the Mass the Kyrie eleison should be said nine times; that the Alleluia should always be said, except during the interval between Septuagesima and Easter. That these words should be inserted in the Canon: Diesque nostros in tua pace disponas (And mayst thou dispose our days in thy peace). He increased the number of processions (litanies) and stations, and completed the Office of the Church. He would have the four Councils, of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, to be received with the same honour as the four Gospels. He allowed the bishop of Sicily, who, according to the ancient custom of their Churches, used to visit Rome every three years, to make that visit once every fifth year.  He wrote several books; and Peter the deacon assures us, that he frequently saw the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove resting on the head of the Pontiff, while he was dictating. It is a matter of wonder that, with his incessant sickness and ill health, he could have said, done, written, and decreed, as he did. At length, after performing many miracles, he was called to his reward in heaven, after a pontificate of thirteen years, six months and ten days; it was on the fourth of the Ides of March (March 12), which the Greeks also observe as a great feast, on account of this Pontiff’s extraordinary learning and virtue. His body was buried in the basilica of Saint Peter near the secretarium.  (As found in: Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year.) 

We need to pray to Pope Saint Gregory the Great in this, our time of apostasy and betrayal, a time of so much confusion, a time when so many once formerly close friends and family members have been divided, sometimes bitterly so, by the conceits of Modernity and Modernism. The following prayer to Pope Saint Gregory the Great, composed by Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., is one that we ourselves can offer at some point today as we conclude our Miraculous Novena of Grace–the four hundred second anniversary of the canonizations by Pope Gregory XV of Saints Francis Xavier, Ignatius Loyola, Philip Neri, and Saint Teresa of Avila–and as we continue our Novena to Saint Joseph prior to his feast day a week from today: 

Thy life, great saint, was spent in the arduous toils of an apostle; but how rich was the harvest thou didst reap! Every fatigue seemed to thee light, if only thou couldst give to men the precious gift of faith; and the people to whom thou didst leave it have kept it with a constancy which is one of thy greatest glories. Pray for us, that this faith, without which it is impossible to please God, may take possession of our hearts and minds. It is by faith that the just man liveth, says the prophet, and it is faith that, during this holy season of Lent, is showing us the justice and mercy of God, in order that we may be converted, and offer to our offended Lord the tribute of our penance. We are afraid of what the Church imposes on us, simply because our faith is weak. If our principles were those of faith, we should soon be mortified men. Thy life, though so innocent, and os rich in good works, was one of extraordinary penance: gain for us thy spirit, and help us to follow thee, at least at a humble distance. Pray for Erin, that dear country of thine, which loves and honours thee so fervently. She is threatened with danger even now, and many of her children have left the faith thou didst teach. An odious system of proselytism has disturbed thy flock; protect it, and suffer now the children of martyrs to be apostates. Let they fatherly care follow them that have been driven by suffering to emigrate from their native land: may they keep true to the faith, be witnesses of the true religion in the countries to which they have fled, and ever show themselves to be obedient children of the Church. May their misfortunes thus serve to advance the kingdom of God. Holy pontiff! intercede for England; pardon her the injustice she has shown to thy children; and, by thy powerful prayers, hasten the happy day of her return to Catholic unity. Pray, too, for the whole Church; thy prayer, being that of an apostle, easily finds access to Him that sent thee. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)  

The readings in Matins for the Divine Office on the Second Sunday of Lent, contain Pope Saint Gregory the Great's homily on the Transfiguration, the account of which were read this year on Ember Saturday in Lent, February 24, 2024 , and the next day, Sunday, February 25, 2024, the Second Sunday of Lent. 

The readings in today's Divine Office contain Pope Saint Leo the Great's explanation as to what Our Lord desired to accomplish by permitting Saints Peter, James and John to see a glipse of His radiant glory atop Mount Thabor in the presence of Moses and Elias:

Dearly beloved brethren, the Lesson from the Holy Gospel which, entering in by our bodily ears, hath knocked at the door of our inner mind, calleth us to understand a great mystery. This, by the grace of God, we shall the more readily do, if we return to consider what hath been told us just before. The Saviour of mankind, even Jesus Christ, laying the foundations of that faith whereby the ungodly are called to righteousness and the dead to life, instilled into the minds of His disciples, both by the voice of His teaching and the wonder of His works, that they should believe Him, the one Christ, to be both the Only-begotten Son of God and the Son of man. Had they believed Him one of these and not the other, it had availed them nothing to salvation; and the danger was equally great, of holding the Lord Jesus Christ to be God without the Manhood, or Man only without the Godhead, since we are constrained to acknowledge that He is perfect God and perfect Man, and that as there is in the Godhead perfect Manhood, so there is in the Manhood perfect Godhead.

To strengthen, therefore, the saving knowledge of this faith, the Lord had asked His disciples what, among the differing opinions of men, it was their own belief and judgment as to Who He was. Then did the Apostle Peter, by the revelation of That Father Who is above all, rising above fleshly things, yea, outstripping the thoughts of men, then did he fix the eyes of his mind upon the Son of the living God, and confess the glory of the Godhead, for he looked not on the substance of the flesh and blood only. And in all the exaltation of this faith so well did he please God, that he was gifted with that joyous blessing, the hallowed establishment of that impregnable rock, whereon the Church being founded, should prevail against the gates of hell and the laws of death; neither, when anything is to be bound or loosed, is any bound or loosed in heaven, otherwise than as the judgment of Peter hath bound or loosed it upon earth.

But, dearly beloved brethren, it behoved that the height of this understanding, which the Lord praised, should rest upon a foundation, and that foundation, the mystery of the lower nature, lest the faith of the Apostle, carried away by the glorious acknowledgment of the Godhead in Christ, should deem it unworthy and unnatural for the impassible God to take into Himself the frailty of our nature; and should thus believe that in Christ the Manhood had been so glorified as to be no longer able to suffer pain, or be dissolved in death. And therefore it was that, when the Lord said how that He must go up unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and rise again the third day, and the blessed Peter, bright with heavenly illumination, and still glowing from the passionate acknowledgment of the Divine Sonship, by a natural, and, as seemed to him, a godly shrinking, could not bear the mention of mockery and insult and a cruel death, he was corrected by the merciful rebuke of Jesus, and moved rather to desire to be a partaker in the sufferings of his Master.  (As found in Matins, The Divine Office, Second Sunday of Lent. The New English Edition of The Mystical City of God explains Our Lady's account of the Transfiguration of her Divine Son atop Mount Thabor. See The Transfixion, Chapter Six: Book Six.)

As she has been throughout the history of the Church, including during the pontificate of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, Our Lady is our sure refuge in our own times of apostasy and betrayal.  She wants to lead us to the glories of Heaven that were foreshadowed to our first pope and the sons of Zebedee atop Mount Thabor. 

Our Lady has told us that we are in the crossing of her arms and in the folds of her mantle. Shouldn’t this be enough to us as we run to her every day, protected by her Brown Scapular and showing our heart’s oblation to her by praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit?

We have Our Lady. She will shower us with the graces won for us by her Divine Son on the wood of the Holy Cross. She has told us that her Immaculate Heart will triumph in the end. May we keep close to her and to her Most Chaste Spouse, Saint Joseph, who is the patron of departing souls, so that we can have a blessed eternity in Heaven, where we can praise the Most Blessed Trinity with all of the angels and the saints, including Pope Saint Gregory the Great and all of those canonized on his feast day in the year 1622. 

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon. 

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us! 

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, pray for us. 

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us. 

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us. 

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us. 

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us. 

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us. 

Pope Saint Gregory the Great, pray for us. 

Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us.

Saint Philip Neri, pray for us. 

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us. 

Pope Saint Gregory II, pray for us. 

Pope Saint Gregory III, pray for us.

Pope Saint Gregory VII, pray for us.