Pascendi Dominici Gregis (On the Errors of the Modernists)

During a relatively short pontificate (1903 - 1914) Pope Pius X devoted much of his time to dealing with issues related to the rapid spread of secularism in the early Twentieth century. Pius eschewed the liberal approach of his immediate predecessor, Leo XIII, favouring instead the strict doctrinal guidelines established by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864). Pius X defined the root cause of the decline of the influence of the Catholic Church to be Modernism, a philosophical and artis