Pope St. Pius X vs. Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome.

rit­ics of Pope Fran­cis claim to love tra­di­tion while time and again tra­di­tion turns out to be utter­ly for­eign to them. And thus, in just the most recent exam­ple, the trad­dies decide that a Mar­i­an title from a Byzan­tine hymn that dates to before 1000 A.D.—well-known among East­ern Catholics and Ortho­dox Christians—must be a ref­er­ence to Pachama­ma and proof of the here­sies of Pope Fran­cis. The irony is that gen­uine Catholic tra­di­tion also teach­es that the pope is pro­tect­ed by God from lead­ing the Church into error and that Catholics owe the pope reli­gious sub­mis­sion, not rebel­lion (or as demon con­sul­tant Tay­lor Mar­shall puts it, “rec­og­nize and resist”).

Pope St. Pius X, whom these same Tra­di­tion­al­ists idol­ize, warned against peo­ple like Tay­lor Mar­shall and Patrick Cof­fin and Eric Sam­mons:

Do not allow your­selves to be deceived by the cun­ning state­ments of those who per­sis­tent­ly claim to wish to be with the Church, to love the Church, to fight so that peo­ple do not leave Her. But judge them by their works. If they despise the shep­herds of the Church and even the Pope, if they attempt all means of evad­ing their author­i­ty in order to elude their direc­tives and judg­ments, then about which Church do these men mean to speak? Cer­tain­ly not about that estab­lished on the foun­da­tions of the apos­tles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Him­self as the cor­ner­stone.

The Church the Tra­di­tion­al­ists love, accord­ing to Pius X, is not the Catholic Church. It is a church of their own cre­ation. Traditionalism—which is often igno­rant of tradition—is a mod­ernist sect.

•••

I’ve seen this quo­tata­tion in sev­er­al places, and only just now decid­ed to trace it to an orig­i­nal source. Pope Pius X spoke these words on May 10, 1909, in an address to Catholic youth enti­tled Con Vera Sod­dis­fazione. It’s in the Acta Apos­toli­cae Sedis for 1909, begin­ning on page 461. The quo­ta­tion above is a trans­la­tion of the orig­i­nal Ital­ian of the text:

Né vi las­ci­ate ingannare dalle sub­d­vle dichiarazioni di altri, che protes­tano ripetu­ta­mente di vol­er stare con la Chiesa, di amare la Chiesa, di com­bat­tere per­ché il popo­lo non si allon­tani da essa, di lavo­rare per­ché la Chiesa, com­pren­den­do i tem­pi, si riac­costi al popo­lo e lo riguadag­ni. Ma giu­di­cateli dalle loro opere. Se mal­trat­tano e dis­prez­zano i Pas­tori del­la Chiesa e persi­no il Papa; se ten­tano ogni mez­zo per sot­trar­si alla loro autori­ta, per elud­ere le loro direzioni, i loro provved­i­men­ti, se non si per­i­tano di innalzare la bandiera del­la ribel­lione, di quale Chiesa inten­dono questi par­lare? Non cer­ta­mente di quel­la sta­bili­ta «super fun­da­men­tum« Apos­tolo­rum et Prophetarum, ipso sum­mo angu­lari lapi­de, Chris­to Iesu.