Happy Friday friends,
And a very happy feast of St. Pius X to all who celebrate. Well, to all of you who celebrate who aren’t in schism — those of you who are should repent and submit to the pope.
It is interesting that the Society of St. Pius X has adopted that particular sainted pope as its putative patron. To be sure, he was a clear-eyed critic of the modernist movement and the heresies thereof. But reducing Pius to a one-dimensional and one-issue pope is to miss the man in full. He was in some respects a bit of a radical progressive, lowering the age for the reception of Communion from 12 to 7, and doing away with a lot of papal ceremony and monarchical trappings. Coming from peasant stock himself, he came under criticism for not making his sisters papal countesses and elevating them to a socially aristocratic level. He basically thought the whole idea was a bunch of bunkum.
For canonists, Pius is remembered chiefly as the great legislative reformer, the inaugurator of the process which led to the first Code of Canon Law, promulgated by his successor in 1917, three years after Pius’ death. As a legislator, Pius was, in some sense, the first truly modern pope, in that he was the one who saw that the Church had become, by dint of the increase in communication and travel, a truly unified and global whole and needed to be governed as such.
Prior to the code, law in the Church was in very large part a disparate and local, or at least regional affair, with issues and cases — sometimes of serious import — being treated in different, sometimes contradictory ways by centuries of overlapping and confused decrees, customs, and even loopholes.
Perhaps the most obvious example of this was the Church’s law on marriage. What we call canonical form – the legal requirements that Catholics marry in a church, with the consent received by a cleric before two witnesses – was brought in with theoretically universal effect by the Council of Trent centuries earlier. However, the law only bound Catholics in territories where it was promulgated by the local hierarchy and, while take up was instant in the Old World, it was far from universal.
The United States was actually a real laggard in this respect, with one of the chief reasons being that, as the country expanded west, ecclesiastical structures and clergy were often rather slow to follow. As such, the bishops didn’t want to impose an ecclesiastical law restricting a natural law right when there was no means for Catholics out on the plains or in the west to abide by it. Effectively banning marriage for pioneer Catholics would have been unjust.
Anyway, by the time Pius came to the papal throne, the world had moved on and we’d become much more of a universal Church, in terms of territorial coverage, and it was time to close the loophole, which he did with the decree Ne temere in 1907, issued by what we’d today call the Dicastery for Clergy. Interestingly, the country where this was most acutely felt was Ireland, which was then still under British rule. Canonical form had not been enforced in the British Isles either, and the sudden complication of marriages between Catholics and Protestants was the source of some friction.
Interestingly, like so many Latin incipits, Ne temere can in isolation be read incorrectly, in the same way Rerum novarum is often (incorrectly) translated as “On the new things” by those unaware of its idiomatic usage to mean “On the revolutions.” The Latin of the Pius-era marriage law is often mistaken as “do not fear,” when in fact it is better read as “lest rashly,” or perhaps “don’t be hasty.”
It is, I think, a nice double meaning for a document calling the global Church to a new, universal and somewhat more rigorous observance to ecclesiastical law and papal authority. Given the society which claims Pius’ name is today outside the legal society of the Church and unable to validly witness the marriages of Catholics, I think it’s a good day to think about it.
Here’s the news.
The News
Pope Leo is in the microstate of San Marino today, one of the oldest sovereign states in the world, which has not received a pope since 2011, when Pope Benedict XVI made the last papal pastoral visit.
San Marino enjoys a privileged relationship with the Holy See, fully surrounded by the Papal States for centuries, and having been under papal protection for much of its history, but preserving its independence all the while.
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Meanwhile, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, often described as the Vatican’s “foreign minister,” is scheduled to travel to Russia next week, in what is likely to be a much trickier trip.
It will be the English archbishop’s first to Russia since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and he is likely to find a country much changed since his last visit in November 2021.
Apart from everything else, the war has pitted two majority Eastern Orthodox nations against each other, and cemented a major realignment within the Orthodox world, further separating the Russian Orthodox Church from the Churches close to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The conflict has also created severe turbulence in relations between the Vatican and the Moscow Patriarchate.
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A German diocesan bishop stepped down Wednesday at the age of 66, citing the “psychological strain” of office. He is the latest in a string of German prelates to offer their resignations well ahead of the customary age, suggesting the burdens of episcopal office are taking an increased toll in the country.
Pope Leo XIV accepted the resignation of Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiesemann of Speyer, southwestern Germany, with the bishop saying he has struggled for years with depression and felt unable to continue serving at “half strength.”
Wiesemann’s early resignation comes a year after Bishop Gregor Maria Hanke stepped down as the Bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria, southern Germany, at the age of 70. Hanke said in June 2025 that he had asked to retire five years before the customary resignation age of 75 because of “inner fatigue” caused by “the many challenges, scandals, and unresolved conflicts” that marked his term in office. Several other bishops have tendered their resignations early, or tried to.
Read all about the trend right here.
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The pontifical delegate to the beleaguered Institute of the Incarnate Word has announced a new general council for the institute, as part of Vatican efforts to reform the congregation.
The delegate also had to order a new website for the group, largely because Vatican-appointed officials had been unable to determine who was actually running the group’s official site. The moves come after a recent decision to revise the group’s formation programs, amid a three-year moratorium on the admission of new members.
The institute has been accused of maintaining a cult of personality around its late founder, who was found canonically guilty before his death of abusing seminarians, and of covering up sexual and psychological abuse by some of its priests. And the Vatican-appointed commissioner of the group accused members last year of failing to recognize the harm caused by its founder, and of resisting reform efforts.
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A significant clash between Church and state is underway in Nigeria, after a relatively cordial July 28 meeting between a delegation of bishops and President Bola Tinubu at the State House in the capital, Abuja.
The controversy ignited shortly before a gubernatorial election that was seen as a test of Tinubu’s political strength in the country’s South West zone, ahead of the Jan., 2027, presidential election, in which he will seek a second term.
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And finally, Pillar columnist Dan Lipinski wrote this week about a recent trip to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs sweep the Dodgers.
While the game was a win for Chicago (and let’s be honest, for all of baseball), Dan laments the loss of silence in big league ballparks. In doing so, he argues, fans are being deprived of experiencing the game of baseball as an education about living our life.
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Works of art
The artwork of the disgraced priest and former Jesuit Marko Rupnik is back in the news this week. Bishop Jean-Marc Micas of Tarbes and Lourdes told a local newspaper that, while the Rupnik mosaics decorating the Marian basilica’s main doors have been covered since 2025, the artist/alleged serial sexual abuser of religious sisters’ remaining works on the shine’s facade would be covered, too, ahead of Pope Leo’s visit next month.
The bishop said that he was taking the decision to cover all the remaining Rupnik art out of respect for victims of abuse and, though I am sure the desire to avoid them forming the backdrop of papal pictures to Lourdes was some kind of factor, they will remain covered henceforth.
That strikes me as a reasonable decision taken for reasonable motives. But I think we should start to think a few steps ahead of this story, because there are some questions that I think are becoming timely.