Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 6:37am

Fortnight for Freedom: Pius XII

Fortnight For Freedom 2014

 

 

Hattip to Father Z. From the speech of Pope Pius XII to seminarians on the opening of the North American College in Rome on October 14, 1953:

 

 

We belong to the Church militant ; and she is militant because on earth the powers of darkness are ever restless to encompass her destruction. Not only in the far-off centuries of the early Church, but down through the ages and in this our day, the enemies of God and Christian civilization make bold to attack the Creator’s supreme dominion and sacrosanct human rights. No rank of the clergy is spared ; and the faithful—their number is legion—inspired by the valiant endurance of their shepherds and fathers in Christ, stand firm, ready to suffer and die, as the martyrs of old, for the one true Faith taught by Jesus Christ. Into that militia you seek to be admitted as leaders.

Imprisonment and martyrdom, We know, do not loom on the horizon that spreads before your eyes. In an atmosphere of untrammeled freedom, where «the word of God is not bound», the Church in your country has grown in numbers, in influence, in strength of leadership in all that makes for the good of the commonwealth. The college on the via dell’Umiltà has seen your priests increase from twenty-fìve hundred to forty-fìve thousand and more-proud and glorious tribute to the unselfìsh, clear-visioned Catholic family life that prevails among you; a mission country become a seminary of apostles for foreign fìelds. But the Church militant is «one body, with one Spirit … with the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism».(Eph 4, 4 ff.) And that Spirit calls for more than a dash of heroism in every priest who would be worthy of the name, whatever the external circumstances of time and place.

The spirit of the martyrs breathes in every priestly soul, who in the daily round of pastoral duties and in his cheerful, unrelenting efforts to increase in wisdom and in grace, gives witness to the Prince of shepherds, who endured the cross, despised the shame «when He gave Himself up on our behalf, a sacrifice breathing out fragrance as He offered it to God». (Eph 5, 2.)

We raise a fervent prayer to Mary Immaculate, under whose patronage you have placed your country, to Mary gloriously assumed into heaven, whom you have wished to honour in your chapel here, that she would always show a mother’s loving care of the clergy of America, and guide you, beloved seminarians, bearers of such high hopes, along the way that leads to that holiness which will bring her to recognize in you a greater and greater resemblance to her own divine Son.

Time, past time, for Catholics in America to recall these words, and work to re-establish both American freedom and the spirit of the Church Militant in our nation.

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Mary De Voe
Monday, June 23, AD 2014 4:59am

Pope Pius XII was holy when he prayed and handsome when he smiled. His genius in resigning his papacy when confronted by Nazi kidnapping him, so that the Pope would not be kidnapped, but only Eugenio Pacelli, is outstanding.
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I guess Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will not be joining us in the Fortnight For Freedom. “Hang onto your tresspasses Nancy. That’s all you got.”

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Tuesday, June 24, AD 2014 11:48am

[…] Redefinition of Family – R. Smith Whatever Isn’t Love – Sarah Babbs, Ignitum Today Fortnight for Freedom: Pius XII the Spirit of the Church Militant – McClarey Marginalizing Catholic Teaching One Grant at a […]

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