How the Patron Saint of Catholic Traditionalism Helped Start the Revolution

In the modern struggles and disagreements over the Liturgy, there tends to be a list of friends and opponents depending on one’s stance. For those of us with a more traditional leaning, Pope St. Pius X looms large as a friend and an image of tradition. He is usually seen as a defender of the tradition and a great proponent of what is called today the Extraordinary Form or Traditional Latin Mass (TLM)—so much so that the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) takes its name from him.

And yet things, people, and movements are seldom as simple as we would like them to be. Despite many good reasons for admiring Pope St. Pius X’s attention to the Sacred Liturgy, he also (arguably) helped lay the groundwork for the revolution that would follow, not so much by his ideas but by his rather sweeping use of papal authority to influence and change the Liturgy in his day.

Read the rest here.

In fairness, I think Catholic Traddies revere Pius X less for his liturgical contributions than for his unreserved condemnation of Modernism, with which, all other differences aside, I suspect we Orthodox could heartily agree. Still there is some fascinating history here.