(?) Leo XIII cause for canonization (why not?) and St Michael Prayer

[CTBcin]

I too am would rather see caution when it comes to canonizing popes. St. John Paul II was a great Pope, but I wish more time was taken before canonizing him. However, the Church has spoken.

There aren’t too many recent popes that I would rush to have canonized, but Leo XIII is one of them. He strikes me as a truly holy and pious pope. He clearly showed a care for the poor and promoted many devotions within the Church.

 

[tafan2]

I agree with you on Leo XIII, but my belief in his holiness and goodness are overshadowed by this fear of too many papal canonizations. So I am ok if the Church doesn’t canonize him for a bit. Indeed, it would not be unusual for a wait of a couple of hundred years for a canonization.

 

[Dovekin]

All this is quite ironic, since Pius was known for being a very pastoral pope in his day. Yet today he gets associated with “rigid traditionalism.”

St Pius is a complex person with a complex legacy. His Oath against Modernism devastated the Church in the first half of the last century. It is the rigidity that accompanied that oath that gets “liberals” upset wih him.

But he was thrust into an extraordinary position. From a peasant background, he was given a place among the princes of Europe. He had a good feel for the ordinary, and it showed in some of his actions. He was pastoral.

And in many ways, he is the inspiration for Vatican 2. When he encouraged children to receive communion, he started the liturgical upheavals imo. Fifty years later, those children were 57 and older. Most of the bishops gathered for the Council were in that group. Their early experience of the Eucharist, against the backdrop of World Wars, convinced them of the need for change.

It is an odd legacy that he left behind. He was at his best when he was the pastoral peasant. Not so good when he engaged the political and intellectual realms.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I didn’t even think of SSPX when I posted. I don’t think of them hardly at all anyway.

When I was a child I had a school reader, I think it was an old one I got at a rummage sale because I was always looking for new books to read, and it had a children’s story about St. Pope Pius X, told at about a second grade reading level, with illustrations. It was all about how he was from a poor family, loved Jesus, and then when he became a priest or bishop or something, he was instructing some older children aged around 12 for their First Communion. A little boy about 7 came up to him and asked if he could be instructed and receive Jesus too, and the future Pope Pius X, looking very sad, had to tell him no, he wasn’t allowed to receive until he was older due to the age limit.

But when Pope Pius X became Pope he thought little children should be able to receive Jesus too, so he lowered the age limit, and now children like the ones reading the story (since it was apparently for kids about age 7 or 8) can receive their First Holy Communion. And wasn’t Pope Pius X a kind man to allow this wonderful thing for children. That’s how I think of St. Pope Pius X, a poor and very kind man who liked children. Apparently a lot of ordinary people saw him that way too because I understand he was loved like St. Pope JPII was many decades later.

Whatever the schismatics and haters have made him into does not concern me.

 

[CTBcin]

St Pius is a complex person with a complex legacy. His Oath against Modernism devastated the Church in the first half of the last century. It is the rigidity that accompanied that oath that gets “liberals” upset wih him.

This is a fair point.

 

[tafan2]

St Pius is a complex person with a complex legacy. His Oath against Modernism devastated the Church in the first half of the last century.

I think the Church was devastated in the second half of the 20th century, not the first.