Pope Pius IX (1792
-1878) was the head of the Catholic Church from 16 June
1846 to his death in 1878. He was the longest-reigning elected pope
in the history of the Catholic Church—nearly 32 years. During his pontificate,
he convened the First Vatican Council in 1869, which decreed papal
infallibility.
Few popes of
modern times have presided over so momentous a series of decisions and actions
as Pius IX. During his reign the development of the modern papacy reached a
kind of climax with the promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility.
It
had long been taught that the church, as “the pillar and bulwark of the truth,”
could not fall away from the truth of divine revelation and therefore was
“indefectible” or even “infallible.” Inerrancy had likewise been claimed for
the Bible by both Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians. As the visible
head of that church and as the authorized custodian of the Bible, the pope had
also been thought to possess a special gift of the Holy Spirit, enabling him to
speak definitively on faith and morals. But this gift had not itself been
identified in a definitive way.
The outward conflicts of the church with modern
thought and the inner development of its theology converged in the doctrinal constitution
Pastor Aeternus (“Eternal Shepherd”), promulgated by the first Vatican Council
on July 18, 1870. It asserted that “the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex
cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and teacher of all
Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority he defines a doctrine
regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the divine
assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility
with which the divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed.” The
decree was, of course, retroactive, even though there were historical incidents
that appeared to contradict the retroactivity, such as the condemnation of Pope
Honorius I by the third Council of Constantinople in 680, which were cited by
opponents of the decree. This opposition was, however, ineffective, and the
dogma of infallibility became the public doctrine of the church. Those who
continued to disagree withdrew to form the Old Catholic Church, which was centered
in The Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland.
Pope Pius IX also
defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, meaning that Mary was conceived without original
sin.
Pope Pius IX was
also the last pope to rule as the Sovereign of the Papal States, which
fell completely to Italian nationalist armies by 1870 and were incorporated
into the Kingdom of Italy. After this, he styled himself as the first
"Prisoner of the Vatican". (Adapted from Wikipedia encyclopedia
and Encyclopedia of Britannica)
