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Pope Benedict XV. Public domain.Jan. 3, 2020
Jim McCrea
Piedmont
Letter to the Editor
Catholic San Francisco
Editor's note: Here is a related post with links to previous reader comment. Additional letters may be found here and here.
Editor:
In the latest round of letters, Richard Morasci, to my mind, rightfully faults a previous letter writer who criticized Nancy Pelosi for calling herself a Catholic. This practice of “I am more Catholic than are you” has a long history in this church. It was addressed by Pope Benedict XV over a century ago.
At that time, the church was deeply divided over Pope Pius X's campaign against "Modernism," which was a catchall for anything Rome deemed suspicious. When Pius died, the conclave of 1914 elected Benedict XV, who immediately issued an encyclical calling on Catholics "to appease dissension and strife" so that "no one should consider himself entitled to affix on those who merely do not agree with his ideas the stigma of disloyalty to faith" (“Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum,” accessible from the Vatican website at https://bit.ly/39D9IBB).
"There is no need of adding any qualifying terms to the profession of Catholicism," Benedict XV concluded. "It is quite enough for each one to proclaim 'Christian is my name and Catholic my surname.'"
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