Saturday, August 21, 2010

Happy St Pius X Day


A little bit of footage of the canonisation of St Pius X, with a German* commentary.
I have a devotion to him, I was ordained in a church dedicated to him.
Invoke his prayers for the Church in England and Wales.

*sorry, Dutch

14 comments:

Left-footer said...

Will do. The Church in England and Wales certainly needs all the prayers it can get.

Mark said...

Thank you for posting this, Father!

(The commentary is Dutch, though. :D )

Francis said...

(The commentary is in Dutch, not German, Father)

David McLaurin said...

I think the commentary is in Dutch, Father....

Ma Tucker said...

Yikes! I think I'd have to insist on a safety belt before I'd climb up there!

David McLaurin said...

One can only hope that the Venerable John Henry's beatification is marked with such pomp and enthusiasm!

Patrick Sheridan said...

What Pius X did to the ancient Psalter arrangement of the Breviary doesn't strike me as particularly ''saintly''...

Left-footer said...

Sorry, Patricius, what did he do?

Mark said...

Patricius: grumble, grumble. ;-P

Left-footer: actually, Patricius has a point; Pius X took the unrealised ambitions of Benedict XIV and the First Vatican Council, and reshaped the Breviary. In doing so, he modified the distribution of the Psalms significantly, and revised the rubrics to give precedence to the temporal over the sanctoral. It has been argued that his redistribution of the Psalms is a discontinuity, as opposed to organic growth. An example was losing Psalms 148-150 as a daily component of Lauds, a break with age-old tradition.

Whilst I agree that changing, for example, from 12 Pss at Matins to nine always, represents a distinct change with the past, I don't know easy it would have been to say the office before then. Mind you Vatican II gave licence to fix the same thing, and we've seen how the Liturgia Horarum interpreted that!

Pius X's style seems very much the authoritarian, ultramontane school...but then again, there are times when that has its uses!

Jacobi said...

He was the Pope who, more than any other, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, acted against the heresy of Modernism, which in its various more recent forms, has so infiltrated and wounded, and continues to wound the Church today.

He is a great saint and we should have listened to him.

p.s. agreed, the commentary is in Dutch

Mark said...

Jacobi: hear hear! :D

Sadie Vacantist said...

Guys I think the commentary is Flemish. The commentary talks of pilgrims from Belgium arriving in Rome.

Mark said...

Well, either way, I know it's not German! ;-p Though speaking a smattering of Afrikaans, I was pleased to understand it. It sounds like Dutch to me, though.

Anonymous said...

I think on balance that Pope St. Pius X's redistribution of the psalter was justified and in accordance with tradition - with exceptions, such as the loss of psalms at Lauds - particularly for the fact the the full psalter was used VERY infrequently throughout the liturgical year. Account had to be made of the growth in the devotion to the saints and the desire for a weekly recitation of the psalter. As we approach the anniversary of the re-distribution of the psalter, I hope it will be commemorated with scholarly studies which show how positive this move was, in general. And yes, the commentary is in Dutch (mooi !) Fr. A.M.

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