In the Gospel we heard Jesus putting together his team calling Simon, James and John. How do we respond to Our Lord’s call in our lives? The call of the Apostles was rooted in Our Lord’s call to all of us to believe in a different kind of Kingdom, the Kingdom of God. This comes with the admonition to repent and believe. But why do we need to repent? What kind of Good News are we to believe in? To put it plainly, we repent of sin, and we believe in truth, His truth. But what are sins? Who says what truth is and isn’t? With the goal of trying to shed light on such questions this is the first of a series of articles exploring various Papal documents of the past. Some of the Popes of days gone by were pretty hard hitting against what they called “the errors and heresies of the modern era”. Pius IX and Pius X are probably the most well-known. But Pope Leo XIII should get the silver medal along with Gregory XVI for the bronze. In Pius X’s Encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), we read, “There has never been a time when the watchfulness of the supreme pastor was not necessary to the Catholic body, owing to the efforts of the enemy of the human race, there have never been lacking men speaking perverse things, vain talkers and seducers (Titus 1:10, Acts 20:30).” Leo XIII, before Pius X points out “the socialists, exciting the envy of the poor toward the rich, contend that it is necessary to do away with private possession of goods…and that men who preside over (the confiscated goods) should act as administrators of these goods… and thus perverts the functions of the State.” (Rerum Novarum, 1891) When we read through these Encyclicals, we hear hard hitting words of condemnation even insults thrown at those singularly pointed out as “enemies of the church”. To our modern ears, such language sounds inappropriate for men of God. In our modern times, where dialogue and listening make up the methodology of church teachings, we may be tempted to breathe a sigh of relief and just say, “Glad we don’t live in those times anymore.” Many modern Catholics in fact are ready to dismiss such words of previous Pontiffs and ignore them altogether. Allow me to offer three reasons why ignoring the past, especially the past teachings of previous popes plays right into the hands of the evil spirits who “prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls” as we say in the prayer to St Michael. First, many of the problems they point to in their time are present in our times. We may not call them by the same names, but they exist, nonetheless. They may even exist in a more prominent way because they have had time to develop and spread. Leo XIII points out a major problem with trusting the “men who preside over confiscated goods”. This might easily be adopted to those who today promote what is called “equity”. Second, history is deeply connected to the history of wars. As believers, we must all be passionate about peace. Therefore, to prevent wars, we should be vigilant about what leads to them. Correcting errors while they are small surely promotes peace. And finally, these popes saw problems, not only in society at large but they sensed the infiltration of problems within. Studying these errors keeps us grounded and focused on the concept of truth within the concept of the “true faith”.