(LifeSiteNews) — In the first encyclical of his papacy, E Supreme Apostolatus, St. Pius X emphasized the pressing need to restore all things in Christ. As he saw it in 1903, the world suffered from the disease of apostasy, which had caused a “disastrous state of human society.”
Today, as we witness a far more disastrous state of human society than he did, we can reasonably consider whether the cures he proposed remain the same. If so, then we labor in vain to find peace, sanity, and goodness other than by following his program of restoring all things in Christ.
The world as St. Pius X saw it, compared to now
St. Pius X wrote of the “terrible and deep-rooted malady” afflicting the world in 1903:
We were terrified beyond all else by the disastrous state of human society today. For who can fail to see that society is at the present time, more than in any past age, suffering from a terrible and deep-rooted malady which, developing every day and eating into its inmost being, is dragging it to destruction? You understand, Venerable Brethren, what this disease is – apostasy from God, than which in truth nothing is more allied with ruin, according to the word of the Prophet: ‘For behold they that go far from Thee shall perish’ (Ps. 72:27).
The pope obviously understood the full implications of the words from Psalm 72: those who go far from God shall perish. The more that society turns away from God, the worse the world will be.
Commenting on this passage in his Against the Heresies, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre considered the level of apostasy in the early 1980s to be tremendously worse:
Thus, for St. Pius X, the great malady of his time is the abandonment of God, apostasy. The abandonment of God! How much more could we speak of this today! If St. Pius X were living today, I think he would be even more terrified than he was in his own time. Back then, there were still seminaries, many priests, many religious and many souls animated with a lively faith. The churches were still full. (p. 2)
What would St. Pius X and Archbishop Lefebvre say about the magnitude of apostasy in 2025? While there are undoubtedly signs of hope in various places, the fact remains that roughly one billion people identifying as Catholic have apparently become relatively content with such evils from Rome as Pachamama, Fiducia Supplicans, and the Synod on Synodality. It seems almost certain that there has never been a time in human history in which so many souls have turned away from God while simultaneously professing to follow Him. This being the case, it is no wonder that the world appears to be on the brink of destruction.
Restoring all things in Christ
As a true Catholic man whom God had entrusted with great authority, St. Pius X was not content to stand idly by as he faced the terrible maladies of his day:
We saw therefore that, in virtue of the ministry of the Pontificate, which was to be entrusted to Us, We must hasten to find a remedy for this great evil, considering as addressed to Us that Divine command: ‘Lo, I have set thee this day over the nations and over kingdoms, to root up, and to pull down, and to waste, and to destroy, and to build, and to plant’ (Jerem. i., 10).
Because the great maladies of the day had been caused by apostasy, the remedy was to do as much as possible to lead souls back to God:
We proclaim that We have no other program in the Supreme Pontificate but that “of restoring all things in Christ” (Ephes. i., 10), so that “Christ may be all and in all” (Coloss. iii, 2) … The interests of God shall be Our interest, and for these We are resolved to spend all Our strength and Our very life. Hence, should anyone ask Us for a symbol as the expression of Our will, We will give this and no other: “To renew all things in Christ.”
The solution was not to promote overall “spirituality,” organize inter-religious prayer gatherings, listen to each other, or to learn to better appreciate all the wonderful things we have in common with our enemies. No, the only solution was to restore all things in Christ.
St. Pius X continued by stating that the Catholic Church is the way to reach Christ:
Now the way to reach Christ is not hard to find: it is the Church. Rightly does Chrysostom inculcate: “The Church is thy hope, the Church is thy salvation, the Church is thy refuge.” (Hom. de capto Euthropio, n. 6.) It was for this that Christ founded it, gaining it at the price of His blood, and made it the depositary of His doctrine and His laws, bestowing upon it at the same time an inexhaustible treasury of graces for the sanctification and salvation of men. You see, then, Venerable Brethren, the duty that has been imposed alike upon Us and upon you of bringing back to the discipline of the Church human society, now estranged from the wisdom of Christ; the Church will then subject it to Christ, and Christ to God.
These words highlight the wickedness of false ecumenism, which seeks to mislead souls into believing that non-Catholic religions are also viable paths to reaching Christ. Those who promote (or even tolerate) false ecumenism oppose not only St. Pius X but also all the saints, and ultimately Our Lord. If we truly wish to restore all things in Christ, we must vigorously oppose false ecumenism.
The enemies are waging a sacrilegious war
As St. Pius X understood, restoring all things in Christ meant counteracting the sacrilegious war being waged against God and His Truth:
In undertaking this glorious task, We are greatly quickened by the certainty that We shall have all of you, Venerable Brethren, as generous cooperators. Did We doubt it We should have to regard you, unjustly, as either unconscious or heedless of that sacrilegious war which is now, almost everywhere, stirred up and fomented against God. For in truth, “The nations have raged and the peoples imagined vain things” (Ps.ii., 1.) against their Creator, so frequent is the cry of the enemies of God: “Depart from us” (Job. xxi., 14). And as might be expected we find extinguished among the majority of men all respect for the Eternal God, and no regard paid in the manifestations of public and private life to the Supreme Will – nay, every effort and every artifice is used to destroy utterly the memory and the knowledge of God … Such, in truth, is the audacity and the wrath employed everywhere in persecuting religion, in combating the dogmas of the faith, in brazen effort to uproot and destroy all relations between man and the Divinity!
Those enemies of God who had fostered the widespread apostasy would not willingly relent in their efforts to “destroy all relations between man and the Divinity,” but St. Pius X still had his bishops to fight alongside him. Today, the enemies of God have seemingly achieved most of their objectives, including the near total destruction of all opposition from a truly Catholic hierarchy. Indeed, some of the most pernicious enemies of God today are called “Your Eminence,” and “Your Holiness.”
God wins but we must fight (on God’s side)
Would St. Pius X or Archbishop Lefebvre have given up if they were alive today? Absolutely not:
Verily no one of sound mind can doubt the issue of this contest between man and the Most High. Man, abusing his liberty, can violate the right and the majesty of the Creator of the Universe; but the victory will ever be with God – nay, defeat is at hand at the moment when man, under the delusion of his triumph, rises up with most audacity. Of this we are assured in the holy books by God Himself. Unmindful, as it were, of His strength and greatness, He “overlooks the sins of men” (Wisd. xi., 24), but swiftly, after these apparent retreats, “awaked like a mighty man that hath been surfeited with wine” (Ps. 1xxvii., 65), “He shall break the heads of his enemies” (Ps. 1xxvii., 22), that all may know “that God is the king of all the earth’ (Ib. 1xvi, 8), ‘that the Gentiles may know themselves to be men” (Ib. ix., 20).
St. Pius X knew there would come a time when God’s enemies would believe they had triumphed. Paradoxically, it is at that moment that God’s victory is near: “the victory will ever be with God – nay, defeat is at hand at the moment when man, under the delusion of his triumph, rises up with most audacity.” Knowing this, we have every reason for confidence, even as our chances of prevailing appear to be slipping away.
Although we know that God will prevail, we must do all we can to fight to “hasten the work of God”:
All this, Venerable Brethren, We believe and expect with unshakable faith. But this does not prevent us also, according to the measure given to each, from exerting ourselves to hasten the work of God – and not merely by praying assiduously: “Arise, O Lord, let not man be strengthened” (Ib. ix., 19), but, more important still, by affirming both by word and deed and in the light of day, God’s supreme dominion over man and all things, so that His right to command and His authority may be fully realized and respected. This is imposed upon us not only as a natural duty, but by our common interest.
We must pray assiduously, as St. Pius X wrote, but more is required. We have to affirm “both by word and deed and in the light of day, God’s supreme dominion over man and all things, so that His right to command and His authority may be fully realized and respected.”
Vatican II and today’s battlefield
St. Pius X saw that the Catholic fight must be directed to overcoming an “enormous and detestable wickedness”:
But if our desire to obtain this is to be fulfilled, we must use every means and exert all our energy to bring about the utter disappearance of the enormous and detestable wickedness, so characteristic of our time – the substitution of man for God.
Commenting on these words in his Against the Heresies, Archbishop Lefebvre wrote:
How can one help but think of the novelties of Vatican Council II? What is most striking in them is the place of man in relation to God. It is practically the religion of man. In the new Mass, for example, it is man that stands out, it is a democratic Mass; whereas the Mass of tradition, the one we call the Mass of all times, is hierarchical; God, Christ, the Church in the person of bishop or priest, then the faithful. (p. 9)
Even beyond this substitution of man for God, we can see that Vatican II’s promotion of religious liberty and false ecumenism fundamentally opposes St. Pius X’s program to restore all things in Christ.
Today, sincere Catholics disagree about what must be done to remedy the great evils we see throughout the Church and society, even if they all agree that we need a genuinely Catholic pope. In reading E Supreme Apostolatus, though, it should be evident where St. Pius X would stand in the debate: we must reject the novelties of Vatican II because they have turned souls away from the Catholic Church, which means they have been turned away from God. This widespread apostasy has been the single greatest contributor to the great evils we see throughout the world.
And so we must ask: are those who defend Vatican II correct, or was St. Pius X correct? For over 60 years, the most influential Catholics in the Church have insisted that anyone who questions the Council is wrong, and indeed flirting with heresy and schism. But where has that defense of Vatican II’s novelties led us? The answer is now undeniable: it has led countless souls away from God.
Thanks be to God, we do not need permission from Francis or anyone else to follow what St. Pius X taught. His ideas were correct in 1903, and they are correct – and even more essential – today. If we want to combat the evils in the world, we need to fight for the unadulterated Catholic Faith that St. Pius X taught. Anything else is ultimately counterproductive and offensive to God. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!