

First, there are testimonies given by such loyal Catholic clergymen as Cardinal Bernetti and Abbe" Barruel of a massive number of priests in the Church who were either conscious infiltrators, or else utterly saturated in their thinking with errors being spread by the Lodges. And second, the extent to which Modernists were found to have proliferated less than twenty years after Roca's claim must not be forgotten. Saint Pius X, in Pascendi, alludes to a situation which could never have occurred had there not already been a significant penetration of this fifth column into Catholic seminaries. The Modernists, he writes, "are the more mischievous the less they keep in the open," and include "many...[in] the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, animated by a false zeal for the Church, [are] lacking the solid safeguards of philosophy and theology, nay more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church [italics added]."51 When many priests are discovered, who not only are deficient in such crucial subjects, but who also sound like Freemasons and the like in their pronouncements, it is hardly rash to question the seminaries. Were it but a handful of such priests identified, they could be considered anomalies that had somehow managed to get themselves ordained. But when it becomes evident that many of them existed, the onus must fall principally on seminaries for having given them a false formation. During Saint Pius1 war against Modernism, he ordered apostolic visitations of every diocese in Italy. Carlo Falconi writes: "many [of these visits] resulted in the closing down of seminaries [italics added], the removal of eminent ecclesiastics, and uncompromising reports on the bishops."52 Such a process of uprooting the noxious weeds needed to be carried out on a thorough worldwide basis, but this program of purifying the seminaries effectively came to an end with the saint's death in 1914.



If, for the sake of argument, Pius X had done nothing else of real significance during his years as Pope besides engaging these subversives in combat the way he did, such an heroic effort certainly would be of itself a. strong reason for his canonization, and equally compelling grounds for according him status as one of the greatest defenders of the faith of all time. But his attempt to expose the perpetrators was, alas, a question of too little, too late. Unfortunately, he was trying to fight in little more than a decade, a condition that had a century or more to fester. However valiantly Saint Pius strove to remedy the situation, he was faced with a task that, humanly speaking, was next to impossible. Even with divine aid, the work was arduous, as already he was faced with a sizable part of the hierarchy that viewed the crisis with relative indifference, and others who, in varying degrees, actually supported the calls for change. The Modernists' triumph finally took place after his death, for not one of his successors exhibited his attentiveness, his fighting spirit, or his profound insights into the truly grave state in which the Church found herself (perhaps they were deluded by the widespread false reports, believed by far too many, that the fight was over — a deceit that, axguably, was the Modernists' greatest victory}. But these traits were absolutely obligatory for a Vicar of Christ in those crucial yeaxs, if the battle was to be won by the forces of good. Sadly, they were largely found wanting in those pontiffs. Whatever praise justly can be given his successors, the fact remains that the