Our Times

Deus, in adjutorium meum intende. Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina.
O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.


Gregory XVI was Pope from 1831-1846. It was a time of uprisings, attempts to unify the Italian states and an almost enslavement of the Church in France.  Pope Gregory was one of the most learned of the popes. He brought about the revival in studying philosophy and theology, which we call Neo-Scholasticism. Educated men who led the movement began adapting Aristotle's works, plus the scholastics  of the Middle Ages to modern conditions. Thomisitic Philosophy (from Thomas Aquinas) is used to this day in teaching Science and Religion, Reason and Faith. Liberalism was a real problem at the time, and his ,Mirari Vos, addressed "Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism." It could be written today. 

Our Church Bulletin for July 15 had excerpts from the Pope's Encyclical.  I am sharing some of it here.

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  We come to you grieving and sorrowful because We know that you are concerned for the faith in these difficult times. Now is truly the time in which the powers of darkness winnow the elect like wheat. "The earth mourns and fades away...And the earth is infected by the inhabitants thereof, because they have transgressed the laws, they have changed the ordinances, they have broken the everlasting covenant." (my emphases in italics)

   We speak of the things which you see with your own eyes, which We both bemoan. Depravity exults; science is impudent, liberty, dissolute. The holiness of the sacred is despised; the majesty of divine worship is not only disapproved by evil men, but defiled and held up to ridicule. Hence sound doctrine is perverted and errors of all kinds spread boldly. The laws of the sacred, the rights, institutions, and discipline --none are safe from the audacity of those speaking evil. Our Roman See is harassed violently and the bonds of unity are daily loosened and severed. The divine authority of the Church is opposed and her rights shorn off. She is subjected to human reason and with the greatest injustice exposed to the hatred of the people and reduced to vile servitude. The obedience due bishops is denied and their rights are trampled underfoot. Furthermore, academies and schools resound with new, monstrous opinions, which openly attack the Catholic faith; this horrible and nefarious war is openly and even publicly waged. Thus, by institutions and by the example of teachers, the minds of the youth are corrupted and a tremendous blow is dealt to religion and the perversion of morals is spread. So the restraints of religion are thrown off, by which alone kingdoms stand. We see the destruction of public order, the fall of principalities, and the overturning of all legitimate power approaching. Indeed this great mass of calamities had its inception in the heretical (and secret - my insertion) societies and sects in which all that is sacrilegious, infamous, and blasphemous has gathered as bilge water in a ship's hold, a congealed mass of all filth.

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As the saying goes, "There is nothing new under the sun."