THE STUNNING PROVIDENCE OF PIUS IX’S
INSTRUCTION MANUAL FOR THE
CATHOLIC CHURCH By Robert Morrison
(LifeSiteNews) — In the eyes of many today,
the Catholic Church appears to be broken in its
human element. Fortunately, the Hoy Ghost
guided the pre-Vatican II popes to promulgate
encyclicals which were the functional
equivalent of doctrinal and spiritual instruction
manuals for the Catholic Church, which can
help us understand and counteract the evils
afflicting the Mystical Body of Christ today.
Many of us are familiar with some of the most
important of the pre-Vatican II encyclicals:
 Mirari Vos, Pope Gregory XVI’s 1832
encyclical on liberalism and religious
indifferentism
 Qui Pluribus, Blessed Pius IX’s 1846
encyclical on faith and religion
 Quanta Cura, Blessed Pius IX’s 1864
encyclical condemning modern errors
(accompanied by the Syllabus of Errors)
 Libertas Praestantissimum, Pope Leo
XIII’s 1888 encyclical on human liberty
 Pascendi Dominici Gregis, St. Pius X’s
1907 encyclical on Modernism
 Mortalium Animos, Pope Pius XI’s 1928
encyclical on religious unity
 Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII’s 1950
encyclical on false opinions threatening
to undermine the foundations of Catholic
doctrine
In each of these, the popes exhorted the
bishops to oppose certain errors threatening
the Catholic Faith. Every single error we see
today from Rome was condemned by these
encyclicals: the popes told us that the
theological errors we see today would bring the
disastrous crisis we see today. So, if we want

to address the crisis we see today we should
turn to the holy Catholic wisdom of the pre-
Vatican II popes who tried to prevent it.
In terms of simplicity and relevance, Blessed
Pius IX’s Qui Pluribus arguably offers the most
valuable and accessible “instruction manual”
for what we face in 2024. In it, we can see that
the Holy Ghost guided the popes to leave us
much of what we need to understand and
address the crisis plaguing the Church and
world today.
God is the Author of the Catholic Faith
As Pius IX wrote, the Catholic religion was
given to us by God rather than men, and
cannot be improved upon by human reason:
Our holy religion was not invented by human
reason, but was most mercifully revealed by
God; therefore, one can quite easily
understand that religion itself acquires all its
power from the authority of God who made the
revelation, and that it can never be arrived at or
perfected by human reason. In order not to be
deceived and go astray in a matter of such
great importance, human reason should indeed
carefully investigate the fact of divine
revelation. Having done this, one would be
definitely convinced that God has spoken and
therefore would show Him rational obedience,
as the Apostle very wisely teaches. For who
can possibly not know that all faith should be
given to the words of God and that it is in the
fullest agreement with reason itself to accept
and strongly support doctrines which it has
determined to have been revealed by God,
who can neither deceive nor be deceived?
From this, we know that any human effort to
perfect or modify the Faith is inherently
misguided. Moreover, because God can
neither deceive nor be deceived, it is
absolutely preposterous to imagine that what
was true prior to Vatican II would today be

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false; or that what was condemned as false
before Vatican II would today be true.
Benefits of the Catholic Church
Pius IX wrote of the tremendous benefits that
God provides to mankind through the Catholic
Church:
This faith, which teaches for life and points
towards salvation, which casts out all vices and
is the fruitful mother and nurse of the virtues,
has been established by the birth, life, death,
resurrection, wisdom, wonders and prophecies
of Christ Jesus, its divine author and perfector.
It made known the saving laws of Christ and,
gaining in strength daily even when it was most
cruelly persecuted, it made its way over the
whole world by land and sea, from the sun’s
rising to its setting, under the single standard of
the Cross! The deceit of idols was cast down
and the mist of errors was scattered. By the
defeat of all kinds of enemies, this faith
enlightened with divine knowledge all peoples,
races and nations, no matter how barbarous
and savage, or how different in character,
morals, laws and ways of life. It brought them
under the sweet yoke of Christ Himself by
proclaiming peace and good tidings to all men!
God could have provided these benefits
without the use of human instruments, and
certainly without the use of an organized
religion, but He chose to establish the Church.
As Pius IX wrote, God wants to provide the
most important things in life through the
Church: the path of salvation; instruction in
avoiding sin and practicing virtue; the
enlightenment of all people with divine
knowledge; and peace. Because God gave
mankind the Church to provide these benefits,
we can be certain that there is no alternative
source of goodness for those who spurn the
Church’s authentic teaching.

How to protect the Church
For over one hundred years prior to the
Council, the popes consistently told the
shepherds what they must do to protect the
Church. Like the other popes, Pius IX directed
his message directly to the bishops:
As bishops, you are the deputies, and thus the
imitators of Christ. In your harmonious pursuits
you have become a sincere model for your
flock, and you enlighten your clergy and faithful
people with the splendor of your sanctity. In
your compassionate mercy you seek out and
overtake with your love the straying and
perishing sheep, as the shepherd in the Gospel
did. You place them paternally on your
shoulders and lead them back to the fold. At no
time do you spare either cares or plans or toils
in religiously fulfilling your pastoral duties and
defending all Our beloved sheep who,
redeemed by Christ, have been entrusted to
your care from the rage, assault and snares of
ravening wolves. You keep them away from
poisonous pasture land and drive them on to
safe ground, and in all possible ways you lead
them by deed, word and example to the harbor
of eternal salvation.
So, the pope and bishops have the primary
duty to safeguard the flock against the
ravening wolves. Pius IX also directed the
bishops on the way in which they must protect
the flock:
We, therefore, placed inscrutably by God upon
this Chair of truth, eagerly call forth in the Lord
your outstanding piety, venerable brothers. We
urge you to strive carefully and zealously to
continually warn and exhort the faithful
entrusted to your care to hold to these first
principles. Urge them never to allow
themselves to be deceived and led into error
by men who have become abominable in their
pursuits. These men attempt to destroy faith on
the pretext of human progress, subjecting it in

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an impious manner to reason and changing the
meaning of the words of God. Such men do not
shrink from the greatest insults to God Himself,
who cares for the good and the salvation of
men by means of His heavenly religion.
Bishops must carefully and zealously warn and
exhort the faithful to hold to the Faith and avoid
error. We may only have a few bishops in the
world willing to do this today, but we know their
names (often because they have been
condemned by the ravening wolves in Rome)
and hear their voices.
Risks to the Church
Pius IX identified the risks facing the Church
then (and still today):
Each of you has noticed, venerable brothers,
that a very bitter and fearsome war against the
whole Catholic commonwealth is being stirred
up by men bound together in a lawless
alliance. These men do not preserve sound
doctrine, but turn their hearing from the truth.
They eagerly attempt to produce from their
darkness all sorts of prodigious beliefs, and
then to magnify them with all their strength,
and to publish them and spread them among
ordinary people. We shudder indeed and suffer
bitter pain when We reflect on all their
outlandish errors and their many harmful
methods, plots and contrivances. These men
use these means to spread their hatred for
truth and light. They are experienced and
skillful in deceit, which they use to set in motion
their plans to quench peoples’ zeal for piety,
justice and virtue, to corrupt morals, to cast all
divine and human laws into confusion, and to
weaken and even possibly overthrow the
Catholic religion and civil society.
Although Pius IX was warning specifically
about “secret sects” (such as the Freemasons),
we can see that Satan is ultimately behind all
such attacks on the Church. However, while

these enemies were generally outside the
Church in 1846, they have now infiltrated the
Church to such an extent that they appear to
have free rein to inflict the same evils Pius IX
described above.
Satan and his minions use various tools to
achieve their evil objectives — such as
Liberalism, Modernism, and now Synodality —
but the objectives remain the same: offending
God and harming the Church. Indeed, we
could easily apply the following words to what
we see from Francis and his Synodal
collaborators today:
Also perverse is the shocking theory that it
makes no difference to which religion one
belongs, a theory which is greatly at variance
even with reason. By means of this theory,
those crafty men remove all distinction
between virtue and vice, truth and error,
honorable and vile action. They pretend that
men can gain eternal salvation by the practice
of any religion, as if there could ever be any
sharing between justice and iniquity, any
collaboration between light and darkness, or
any agreement between Christ and Belial.
The risks to the Church are not that these
enemies would actually change Church
teaching, for the truths that God provided to
His Church cannot be altered in the least by
Satan or his minions. As we see now, though, it
is quite possible that the Church’s enemies will
succeed in deceiving men into thinking that the
Church has changed its teaching. This is why
Pius IX exhorted the bishops to remain
vigilant.
Tragically, far too many bishops abandoned not
only their flocks but the Faith. Now we see the
filthy results:
As a result of this filthy medley of errors which
creeps in from every side, and as the result of
the unbridled license to think, speak and write,

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We see the following: morals deteriorated,
Christ’s most holy religion despised, the
majesty of divine worship rejected, the power
of this Apostolic See plundered, the authority of
the Church attacked and reduced to base
slavery, the rights of bishops trampled on, the
sanctity of marriage infringed, the rule of every
government violently shaken and many other
losses for both the Christian and the civil
commonwealth. Venerable brothers, We are
compelled to weep and share in your lament
that this is the case.
This is what we see today and, as Pius IX
wrote, it is the direct result of errors that have
undermined the Faith of those Catholics who
ought to be spreading God’s truth and
goodness throughout the world.
How to repair the Church
While it is true that only God can “repair the
Church” today, He ordinarily makes use of
human instruments to help accomplish His will.
As Pius IX wrote, God wants Catholics (and
bishops in particular) to zealously cooperate
with His grace to defend the Catholic Faith in
times of crisis:
Therefore, in this great crisis for religion,
because We are greatly concerned for the
salvation of all the Lord’s flock and in fulfillment
of the duty of Our Apostolic ministry, We shall
certainly leave no measure untried in Our
vigorous effort to secure the good of the whole
Christian family. Indeed, We especially call
forth in the Lord your own illustrious piety,
virtue and prudence, venerable brothers. With
these and relying on heavenly aid, you may
fearlessly defend the cause of God and His
holy Church as befits your station and the
office for which you are marked. You must fight
energetically, since you know very well what
great wounds the undefiled Spouse of Christ
Jesus has suffered, and how vigorous is the
destructive attack of Her enemies. You must

also care for and defend the Catholic faith with
episcopal strength and see that the flock
entrusted to you stands to the end firm and
unmoved in the faith. For unless one preserves
the faith entire and uninjured, he will without
doubt perish forever.
We must fight with holiness, which can only
proceed from adherence to the true Catholic
Faith. Pius IX wrote that our salvation depends
upon preserving the Faith “entire and
uninjured.” To better preserve the Faith from
attacks that would distort it in the eyes of the
unwary, shepherds must expose the lies of the
Church’s enemies:
‘It is an act of great piety to expose the
concealments of the impious and to defeat
there the devil himself, whose slaves they are.’
Therefore, We entreat you to use every means
of revealing to your faithful people the many
kinds of plot, pretense, error, deceit and
contrivance which our enemies use. This will
turn them carefully away from infectious books.
Also exhort them unceasingly to flee from the
sects and societies of the impious as from the
presence of a serpent, earnestly avoiding
everything which is at variance with the
wholeness of faith, religion, and morality.
Therefore, never stop preaching the Gospel, so
that the Christian people may grow in the
knowledge of God by being daily better versed
in the most holy precepts of the Christian law;
as a result, they may turn from evil, do good,
and walk in the ways of the Lord.
It is remarkable to consider that Bishop Joseph
Strickland was “canceled” by Rome for calmly
and charitably doing what Pius IX called an
“act of great piety” in exposing the lies
threatening the Mystical Body of Christ. Given
our current crisis, this should be the only sign
other bishops need to be convinced that they
too must see that Blessed Pius IX was

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speaking to them as much as he was speaking
to the bishops alive in 1846.
Even when we do all we can to cooperate with
God’s grace, we still must trust in God’s
Providence lest we become discouraged:
We reflect on the most serious duties of the
supreme apostolate especially in a period of
great instability, We would simply have fallen
into great sadness, did We not place all Our
hope in God who is Our Savior. For He never
abandons those who hope in Him. Time and
again, so as to demonstrate what His power
can accomplish, He employs weak instruments
to rule His Church; in this way, all men may
increasingly realize that it is God Himself who
governs and protects the Church with his
wonderful providence.
And, like the other popes, Pius IX told us that
we must turn to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the
most sweet mother of us all:

That the Lord may more readily respond to Us,
let us call as intercessor Her who is always
with Him, the most holy Virgin Mary,
Immaculate Mother of God. She is the most
sweet mother of us all; she is our mediatrix,
advocate, firmest hope, and greatest source of
confidence. Furthermore, her patronage with
God is strongest and most efficacious.
Pius IX did not have the benefit of knowing the
messages of Our Lady of Fatima, but we can
be sure that he would agree with everything
Our Lady communicated to the world through
the three children of Fatima.
God has not abandoned us in the terrible crisis
afflicting the Church, but it seems entirely
possible that He expects us to make use of the
abundant gifts He has given us. We are in this
predicament because our shepherds
abandoned the holy guidance that God
provided through the pre-Vatican II popes.
Each new development from Rome makes it
more evident that their words were true, as the
evils they tried to stave off become ever more
suffocating. This should alert us all to the great
need to return to that guidance now if we seek
to cooperate with God’s grace to counter the
enemies determined to destroy the
Church. Immaculate Heart