He was a deeply flawed Pope and according to him the world was living in deeply flawed times. The fucking place had gone Modern and that was just another word for Satan. Pope Pius the 9th was squatting in the shrinking Papal States and planning god's counter-attack; he had the big guns and he had the Date. It was going to be a 3-fer. With a single blast he would hit all 3 of his targets at once: Papal Infallibility, The Immaculate Conception, and the Hydra-headed beast of Modernity. Pio 9 was locked & loaded and Speakin' from the Chair. He was Ex Cathedra & Sensus Fidelium - as long as that pesky Sensus was kept under the Yoke of the Magisterium. Johnny-Mary Mastai-Ferretti was the longest-reigning elected Pope in Church History. He sat on the Chair of St. Peter for over 32 years from 1846 to 1878. It was Pius 9 who rammed thru the detested & dreaded doctrine of Papal Infallibility. And it was Pio 9 who first used that Licence when he stunned the sensibility of the age by doin' Dogma in the `Fact' of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He had that iffy meme Canonized as Truth Eternal. The bulk of the world in 1870 yawned and turned away. It was oddly embarrassing in a Scientific Age. Pio Nono had a fit.
Literally - the Pope was an Epileptic & his fits had become legendary. But he lived in the dawn of the Triumph of Science so Epilepsy was no longer considered Diabolical sui generis. He was a Pontiff known for his Mood-Swings and History would see him in the same light. He started his pontificate as the most liberal Pope since Peter and ended it spitting & screeching at Democracy & Freedom of the Press & all them fuckin' Pantheistic Pricks chanting "Give us Spinoza!" If you could boil the Zeitgeist and distill the essence of the Opposition to Secularism and Modernity it would look a lot like Pio Nono. Long before the idiots at Fox News there was Pius 9 scowling at the `godless' and fulminating about the pointy-headed Scientists with their graphs & statistics. Pio had the Holy Ghost, goddamn it! He didn't need no stinkin' numbers. Pio No No had god as a wingman. So fuck you and your `Scientific Method.' Pope Pius Niner had seen the Ancien Régime shudder, crack, and begin the crumble - it was proof of Satan's footprints in the world. In 1848 half of the guvments of Europa were swept away by Socialists and Citizens. Rabble in the Rubble. Pio 9 saw his mission: to save the Monkey from the Monkey.
One of the first things Pio 9 did as Pope was to free all the Political Prisoners of his predecessor and give Rome a "constitutional framework" - albeit under the guidance of his beer buddy, the Philosopher Prince Antonio "Tight Tony" Rosmini-Serbati. Europa was erupting in Socialist Revolutions & 1848 saw the deaths and rebirths of countless Regimes as the Old Order began slipping under. The Machines were Coming and they were sweeping away the feudal & the prerequisites of the Fathers. Italy was trying to birth itself and the nest of Papal States were blocking the delivery. All the Germanies were trading in their Single-Adlers & Double-Headed Eagles were claiming the fields of their flags & bunting. The French Revolution had mutated into the Napoleons over the bones of Frog Nobility. All over Europa the Priests were scared & on the run. Secular governments had seized and closed 10,000 monasteries, convents, & schools. The new Pope watched as the Church lay flacid & twitching as its Power ebbed away. When the fucking French withdrew their armies from Italy the Eyeties surged to fill the vacuum and bam! - the Pope lost his last territories as the Vatican's Papal States were invaded and turned over to the Italian Governments. The once Ruler of the Earth now sat on 100 Acres in Rome, his armies gone, his voice muted, as the cacophony of the Modern enveloped him. That fuckin' Spinoza, he was thinking. That fuckin' lil' jew had pulled the plug in the Christian bath and it was getting cold in the tub. Descartes, Spinoza, and the singed ghost of Giordano Bruno - those bastards had opened up cracks in the Orthodoxy and the whole damn house of cards had crumbled into illusions. In the 200 years after the Dutch Golden Age Christianity had been severely undermined & challenged by Free Thinkers & Free Pressers & those new priests of the new faith: Scientists. At the core of the rot were the most dangerous ideas to blind faith: Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Thought, Freedom of Speech. If you were the Pope of the oldest organized Religion on earth you would smell those things for what they were: the Flatulence of Satan. Few Americans today realize that the largest impediment to what we call Freedom has always been the Roman Catholic Church and that up until the 1970s Church teachings were used as Weapons against insidious movements like Democracy. Until Ronald Reagan made a deal with the Vatican to destroy Communism, the worst enemy in the eyes of the Papacy was America, Democracy, Freedom, Capitalism and Modernism. Coca Cola had usurped the sensus fidelium.
Skippy loves this painting: it's by the Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt and was done in 1853. Its name is: The Awakening Conscience. It could have been painted by Pius the Ninth. Hunt was deeply Christian and was scared shitless by the Modern world. The woman in the picture is a "kept" woman & that's her Modern Lover, not her husband - she wears no wedding ring and Hunt goes out his way to show you that. The room is crammed with Symbols of a World going off track: the unfinished tapestry hanging on the side of the piano, the cat toying with a dead bird, the clock stuck under glass, the unravelling threads of an abandoned weaving, the concupiscent leer of her lover. The music on the piano is Thomas Moore's Nostalgic ode: "Oft in the Stilly Night." Hanging on the wall is a print of Frank Stone's Cross Purposes. But the Ruined Woman rises from her lover's lap, transfixed it seems by something she sees out the window. Out there it's all clean and filled with light. She rises from the Lap of Iniquity and Modernity and is being pulled back into the light - by her Conscience. Everything in the Room is trapped in a Prison of man's culture. Framed pictures, time covered in glass, notes frozen on a page, the dead bird in the clutches of the cat. She is living in a "Kept World" and she is a Kept Whore. But she's rising . . . up out of the Common & Vulgar & all the Xenia 2 objects of Culture. Hunt meant the picture as a companion piece to his overtly Christian painting: The Light of the World, which shows Christ holding a lantern as he knocks on a huge handleless door - hunt's symbol of the modern world with its "obstinately shut mind." Everything in the room is young and new and a trap; outside, in the light of god's nature the world has drifted into Autumn with its Eternal Truth of what awaits us in Eternity. Except for the fact that many thought the image was semi-pornographic, you could almost see this hanging in the Papal Apartments of Pio Nono. His only Caveat about the scene would be to insist that the Awakening Conscience referred to is not Free but instead is guided, molded, and dictated by the Holy Church, the Holy Ghost, and their conduit on earth: il Papa. The Pope. Himself. Pius had lost the Papal States, his Army, and for all intents and purposes any claim to morality, but he would be goddamned if he was going to give up on Authority. The Rationalists had faith on the ropes and Pio No No was about to come out swinging.
On December 8th, 1864 Pope Pius the 9th unleashed the Vatican Hounds in the guise of the Encyclical: Quanta Cura. The date was no accident. It's the Catholic "Holy Day of Obligation" which celebrates the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Pio had browbeaten the Cardinals during the First Vatican Council until they had relented and adopted his insistence on the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility. The Dogma is deceptively simple: Since god had established his Church and appointed Peter as the Vicar of Christ on Earth then whenever Peter, or any other Pope, issued statements on Matters of Faith & Morals it was plain & simple god talking thru the Pope. So whatever a Pope said - while claiming his ex cathedra status - was instantly True and Infallible. God can't lie, the Church said - confirming what Spinoza believed about God or Nature - ergo, whatever issues forth from the Fathers must be believed and followed under pain of the loss of your immortal soul. Pio's first test of his new powers came with the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception - the belief that so holy a Vas as Mary could not have ever been touched by sin. Mary, Pio declared, was conceived without sin, born without sin, and lived her entire life unsullied by the smallest of sins. Medieval monks tied themselves in knots over such questions as: Did Jesus Shit? Could Mary Fart? Now the world had the answer. Mary was spotless and when she died, so that not even her body would face the rot, she was "Assumed" - body and soul directly into heaven. Pio No No was on a roll. So he summed it up and wrote it down. When it was done be appended a few more pages to the finished Encyclical. This he called: The Syllabus of Errors and it is this `Syllabus' which has come to define the Counter Attack of the Catholic Church against the Errors of the Modern World. The world which had been born under the propositions of Benedictus Spinoza and the Geometric Logic of Réne Descartes. The Brave New World which had been kindled from the smoldering ashes of Bruno as they lay in the street of the Campo di Fiori - not a half-mile from the Vatican itself. Now that his Authority was Infallible and Complete the Pope sat back, farted, and began his rant on god's enemies.
Pius 9 had been kidnapped by the Jesuits and those ungodly minions set themselves up as the Pope's Confessors and with the Pontiff's blessing they had created this `Shutzstaffel' - this "protection squadron" from where they worked at enforcing policies of instant and blind obedience to the Will of the Holy See. Their flowery & pretentious phrasings are all over the Encyclical. The Letter to the Faithful is only 3 pages long and functions as a Declaration of War against all the Errors & Blasphemies of Modernity. The Pope, the Encyclical states, wants to "nourish the flock with words of faith ... and to guard it from poisoned pastures ... to unveil and condemn all those heresies and errors which ... have frequently excited violent tempests ... the nefarious enterprises of wicked men, who, like raging waves of the sea foaming out their own confusion ... by their deceptive opinions ... most pernicious ..." You get the drift. First he condemns "the ungodly principle of what is called `Naturalism' - with this he lumped both Pantheism and Absolute Rationalism. Here he was taking dead aim at the effects which Spinoza & Descartes had had on Western thinking. Next the Pope condemned as heresy Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Public Worship, and the Freedoms of the Press. The Monkey was not going to be allowed to think freely - wasn't that the source of his Original Sin? Paragraph 3 condemns the contemporary movement to separate Church and State. His argument is that the Catholic Church has an Historical Right and Duty to Oversee and Advise "not only over private individuals, but over nations, peoples, and their sovereign princes" and that his right extended "even to the end of the world." He quoted Pope Gregory 16 who had called the Modern idea that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right" an "Insanity." His argument was this: if you let the Monkey think freely then there were bound to be monkey's who "will dare to resist the Truth." Fuckin' Monkeys.
Pio pounces on "Indifferentism and Latitudinarianism" next. The idea that god didn't care whether or not you were Catholic or Protestant was a Sin all by itself. Just having the idea. The further heresy of thinking that god didn't care whether or not you were even a Christian and that a Buddhist say - or even a Jew - might also be saved was 9th level of Dante's Inferno type shit. Socialism and Communism were condemned. All Secret Societies, non-sanctioned Bible Societies, and Liberal Clerical Societies were condemned. Public Opinion was condemned. Taking Priests out of schools was condemned. The Encyclical Quanta Cura laid out the Pope's Rant in broad strokes and it was the appended document - the "Syllabus of Errors" which dotted the "i"s and crossed the "t"s. It is breathtaking to realize that every Value which defines us as American is Condemned as Heresy by the Catholic Church. Our vaunted freedoms of Speech, Press, and Religion are all Mortal Sins. Our freedoms of Thought and Conscience are grounds for Excommunication. Capitalism is evidence of Satan. The Separation of Church and State is a form of Christian Suicide and is a Sin which cannot be forgiven. And Remember: The Pope is Infallible, so these are the judgments of god.
France reacted by trying to suppress the circulation of the Encyclical and the Syllabus and by banning Priests from explaining the Pope's missive from the pulpit. America ignored it - the American Bishops knew damn well it was partially aimed at them so they simply ducked and most Americans never heard of the Encyclical or its Syllabus. The controversy over the Encyclical swept Europa and flared up again whenever and wherever its ramifications were exposed. In 1895 the Patriarch of Venice was quoted as having "taught from his Cathedral pulpit the transubstantiation of the person of the Pope into the Person of the Eternal Son of God." Blasphemy! The Protestants screamed. The Archbishop responded: "The Pope is not only the representative of Jesus Christ, but he is Jesus Christ Himself hidden under the veil of flesh. Does the Pope speak? It is Jesus Christ who speaks. Does the Pope accord a favor or pronounce an anathema? It is Jesus Christ who pronounces the anathema or accords the favor. So that when the Pope speaks, we have no business to examine - we have only to obey. We have no right to criticize his decisions or discuss his commands. Therefore every one who would wear the crown ought to submit himself to Divine Right." In 1910 Pope Pius 10 issued a Mandatory Oath to be sworn to by "all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries to preserve the integrity of the holy Faith." No Nazi Oath of SS Loyalty or Wehrmacht Oath to Hitler was more far reaching, inclusive, and total. The Catholic Oath was to Dogma & Definitions as pronounced by the Pope thru his Church to the People. The oath said that god could be known and his existence demonstrated. It said that his miracles and prophecies were the sure sign of the "divine origin of Christianity." The Church was god's body on Earth and the Pope was its head. Our faith came directly from Jesus thru his Apostles and Popes and never changed its meaning. It was not open to Interpretation. Faith was a higher Truth than Secular Truths. Dogma belonged only to the Church and all the Heresies and Condemnations decreed by the Popes stand eternally. All teachers must profess thru Sacred Authority and not subject the Catholic Traditions to Historical & Scientific Analysis.
Pius the 10th ends his Mandatory Loyalty Oath like this: "Finally, I declare that I am completely opposed to the error of the Modernists who hold that there is nothing divine in sacred tradition; or what is far worse, say that there is, but in a Pantheistic sense, with the result that there would remain nothing but this plain simple fact - one to be put on a par with the ordinary facts of history - the fact, namely, that a group of men by their own labor, skill, and talent have continued through subsequent ages a school begun by Christ and his apostles. I firmly hold, then, and shall hold to my dying breath the belief of the Fathers in the charisma of truth, which certainly is, was, and always will be in the succession of the episcopacy from the apostles. The purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way." The Oath was in force until 1967 when Pope Paul 6 lifted it. Mostly from utter embarrassment, but also because the Church had decided that Communism was a bigger sin than Modernism and while the Church has never surrendered in its War on the Modern it has made its own separate Deals and Peaces with the Devil. In his Theological-Political Treatis of 1670, Baruch Spinoza had declared War on religious intolerance and staunchly defended Secular Guvment completely separated from Religion. In it the "little jew" had argued that so called "revealed" religions must be analyzed by Reason and not by Faith. Theology, he said, must be severed from Philosophy. Theology has the goal of Obedience. Philosophy aims to grok Rational Truths. Binding our beliefs to Traditions, he said, only breeds deeper and deeper Ignorance as the time of the Traditions fade. God does not accomplish Miracles, Spinoza wrote, because he can't. God is Nature and Nature cannot disobey its own laws. He argued that the Torah was an Ancient Social Contract and since the Ancients no longer existed than the Contract was null & void. All of Spinoza's writings are on the Index - the Vatican's list of Books which are banned as Heresy & Errors or as Teddycaustic to the One, True, Faith. It's an Honor, really. No other Jewish Writer has made the Catholic Index. It's as if the "little jew" had reached a level of Transcendence.
That's just cruel. To keep on picking on "W" like that is `piling on.' Actually, though, Bush had the same concept of Presidential Power. He thought it was Infallible. As Pope John Paul 2nd indicates in the "Unders" on this page: the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility has become a Noose around the neck of the Church. It constrains any changes at all which might, in any way, conflict with anything some idjit of a Pontiff might have mumbled from the Chair. If all Dogma was True and all Dogma was True Forever, and all Dogma could not be analyzed by Reason ... then the Church was not going to change with the times. It couldn't. To do so would admit that they had been wrong, and the Church can't be wrong. If Infallibility fell what would the Church have left as its Authority? Its priests are pedophiles; its bishops are cheap politicians, and its current Pope used to be a Nazi. In every poor country on earth it stands in the way of progress thru its draconian and medieval policies on contraception, abortion, and family planning of any kind except the hilarious Rhythm Method which is an attempt to fuck your way around those days when tiny souls hover around your couplings. Did you know that the Vatican owns an Italian Condom company?
The Linchpin of Catholic Theology is that God is History. His Narrative is unfolding in the world around us. Spinoza challenged that with his claim that God has no Means and no Ends in History. "Any narrative about final salvation or an end to history can be seen as human, but it can have no basis in how things are (`in nature'). This is the complete Disenchantment of Nature." The Pantheist Spinoza says that while God and Nature are One, "It" has no intrinsic ends or purpose in the Physical life of the World. If God had a purpose - that is, if god wanted something - that would only imply that god was imperfect and lacking. A logical contradiction. The Universe is Perfect. God is Perfect. Nothing the Monkey can do will affect that. There really isn't any choice in the matter. There really isn't any Freedom at all concerned with god's perfect world. Everything is simply Necessary. But that's managable because Everything is only One Substance and that's Deus sive Natura. Spinoza could be maddeningly Simple in his Complexities. Faith, he said, belonged to the Past. Reason would be our new Lighthouse. With it we could accomplish true miracles like thinking ourselves outside the supernatural. To gain Spinoza's god we would have to give up on the Idea of God. Pope Pius 9 wanted Spinoza and his Modern World to go to Hell - so he put them there. Because he's Infallible and he had to.
To the right is the Illustrated London Times drawing of the Magestical Moment when Pius 9 proclaimed - Ex Cathedra - the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility. The Popes are all about Pomp and Auctoritas. Old celibate men in medieval dresses chanting in Latin and channeling god. How cool is all that? Baruch Spinoza, for some reason, thought we would be better off without it. Go figure.
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