On the feast of Pope St. Pius X, Frank Wright examines the saint’s warnings against modernism and argues they bear a striking resemblance to the present crisis in the Catholic Church. Drawing from Pius X’s 1910 apostolic letter Notre Charge Apostolique, Wright highlights the Pope’s warnings against vague religious language, subordinating Catholicism to political ideology, and attempts to construct a universal religious system stripped of firm dogma, hierarchy, and discipline. These warnings, Wright argues, anticipated the synodal and liberalized Church of today.
Pius X’s anti-modernism, Wright contends, is directly connected to the SSPX’s present conflict with Rome. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre insisted that Catholics cannot abandon their faith merely to give the appearance of obedience, a principle the SSPX continues to carry forward. The irony is striking: the Church still commemorates Pius X, but his own positions would put him at odds with the contemporary Vatican. If he were alive today, Wright suggests, he would be laicized, and that tells you everything about how far the Church has drifted from the faith he defended. The crisis is not new. It was foreseen. The question is whether Catholics will heed the warning before it is too late.
