Part 36

You know, venerable brethren, with what care and what pastoral vigilance the Roman Pontiffs, our predecessors—fulfilling the charge intrusted to them by our Lord Jesus Christ himself in the person of the blessed Peter, chief of the apostles —have unfailingly observed their duty in providing food for the sheep and the lambs, in assiduously nourishing the flock of the Lord with the words of faith, in imbuing them with salutary doctrine, and in turning them away from poisoned pastures; all this is known to you, and you have appreciated it. And certainly our predecessors, in affirming and in vindicating the august Catholic faith, truth, and justice, were never animated in their care for the salvation of souls by a more earnest desire than that of extinguishing and condemning by their letters and their constitutions all the heresies and errors which, as enemies of our divine faith, of the doctrines of the Catholic Church, of the purity of morals, and of the eternal salvation of man, have frequently excited serious storms, and precipitated civil and Christian society into the most deplorable misfortunes. For this reason our predecessors have opposed themselves with vigorous energy to the criminal enterprise of those wicked men, who, spreading their disturbing opinions like the waves of a raging sea, and promising liberty when they are slaves to corruption, endeavor by their pernicious writings to overturn the foundations of the Christian Catholic religion and of civil society; to destroy all virtue and justice; to deprave all minds and hearts; to turn away simple minds, and especially those of inexperienced youth, from the healthy discipline of morals; to corrupt it miserably, to draw it into the meshes of error, and finally to draw it from the bosom of the Catholic Church. But as you are aware, venerable brethren, we had scarcely been raised to the chair of St. Peter above our merits, by the mysterious designs of Divine Providence, than seeing with the most profound grief of our soul the horrible storm excited by evil doctrines, and the very grave and deplorable injury caused specially by so many errors to Christian people, in accordance with the duty of our apostolic ministry, and following in the glorious footsteps of our predecessors, we raised our voice, and by the publication of several encyclicals, consistorial letters, allocutions, and other apostolic letters, we have condemned the principal errors of our sad age, re-animated your utmost episcopal vigilance, warned and exhorted upon various occasions all our dear children in the Catholic Church to repel and absolutely avoid the contagion of so horrible a plague. More especially in our first encyclical of the 9th November, 1846, addressed to you, and in our two allocutions of the 9th December, 1854, and the 9th June, 1862, to the consistories, we condemned the monstrous opinions which particularly predominated in the present day, to the great prejudice of souls and to the detriment of civil society—doctrines which not only attack the Catholic Church, her salutary instruction, and her venerable rights, but also the natural, unalterable law inscribed by God upon the heart of man—that of sound reason. But although we have not hitherto omitted to proscribe and reprove the principal errors of this kind, yet the cause of the Catholic Church, the safety of the souls which have been confided to us, and the well-being of human society itself, absolutely demand that we should again exercise our pastoral solicitude to destroy new opinions which spring out of these same errors as from so many sources. {2469} These false and perverse opinions are the more detestable as they especially tend to shackle and turn aside the salutary force that the Catholic Church, by the example of her Divine author and his order, ought freely to exercise until the end of time, not only with regard to each individual man, but with regard to nations, peoples, and their rulers, and to destroy that agreement and concord between the priesthood and the government which have always existed for the happiness and security of religious and civil society, For as you are well aware, venerable brethren, there are a great number of men in the present day who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of naturalism, as it is called, dare to teach that the perfect right of public society and civil progress absolutely require a condition of human society constituted and governed without regard to all considerations of religion, as if it had no existence, or, at least, without making any distinction between true religion and heresy. And, contrary to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures, of the church, and of the fathers, they do not hesitate to affirm that the best condition of society is that in which the power of the laity is not compelled to inflict the penalties of law upon violators of the Catholic religion unless required by considerations of public safety. Actuated by an idea of social government so absolutely false, they do not hesitate further to propagate the erroneous opinion, very hurtful to the safety of the Catholic Church and of souls, and termed "delirium" by our predecessor, Gregory XVI., of excellent memory, namely: "Liberty of conscience and of worship is the right of every man—a right which ought to be proclaimed and established by law in every well-constituted State, and that citizens are entitled to make known and declare, with a liberty which neither the ecclesiastical nor the civil authority can limit, their convictions of whatever kind, either by word of mouth, or through the press, or by other means." But in making these rash assertions they do not reflect, they do not consider, that they preach the liberty of perdition (St. Augustine, Epistle 105, Al. 166), and that "if it is always free to human conviction to discuss, men will never be wanting who dare to struggle against the truth and to rely upon the loquacity of human wisdom, when we know by the example of our Lord Jesus Christ how faith and Christian sagacity ought to avoid this culpable vanity." (St. Leon, Epistle 164, Al. 133, sec. 2, Boll. Ed.) Since also religion has been banished from civil government, since the doctrine and authority of divine revelation have been repudiated, the idea intimately connected therewith of justice and human right is obscured by darkness and lost sight of, and in place of true justice and legitimate right brute force is substituted, which has permitted some, entirely oblivious of the plainest principles of sound reason, to dare to proclaim "that the will of the people, manifested by what is called public opinion or by other means, constitutes a supreme law superior to all divine and human right, and that accomplished facts in political affairs, by the mere fact of their having been accomplished, have the force of law." But who does not perfectly see and understand that human society, released from the ties of religion and true justice, can have no further object than to amass riches, and can follow no other law in its actions than the indomitable wickedness of a heart given up to pleasure and interest? For this reason, also, these same men persecute with so relentless a hatred the religious orders, who have deserved so well of religion, civil society, and letters. They loudly declare that the orders have no right to exist, and in so doing make common cause with the falsehoods of the heretics. For, as taught by our predecessor of illustrious memory, Pius VI., "the abolition of religious houses injures the state of public profession, and is contrary to the counsels of the Gospel, injures a mode of life recommended by the church and in conformity with the Apostolic doctrine, does wrong to the celebrated founders whom we venerate upon the altar, and who constituted these societies under the inspiration of God." (Epistle to Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, March 10, 1791.) In their impiety these same persons pretend that citizens and the church should be deprived of the opportunity of openly "receiving alms from Christian charity," and that the law forbidding "servile labor on account of divine worship" upon certain fixed days should be abrogated, upon the fallacious pretext that this opportunity and this law are contrary to the principles of political economy. Not content with eradicating religion from public society, they desire further to banish it from families and private life. Teaching and professing these most fatal errors of Socialism and Communism, they declare that "domestic society, or the entire family, derives its right of existence solely from civil law, whence it is to be concluded that from civil law descend all the rights of parents over their children, and, above all, the right of instructing and educating them." By such impious opinions and machinations do these false spirits endeavor to eliminate the salutary teaching and influences of the Catholic Church from the instruction and education of youth, and to infect and miserably deprave by their pernicious errors and their vices the pliant minds of youth. All those who endeavor to trouble sacred and public things, to destroy the good order of society, and to annihilate all divine and human rights, have always concentrated their criminal schemes, attention, and efforts upon the manner in which they might above all deprave and delude unthinking youth, as we have already shown. It is upon the corruption of youth that they p]ace all their hopes. Thus they never cease to attack the clergy, from whom have descended to us in so authentic manner the most certain records of history, and by whom such desirable benefit has been bestowed in abundance upon Christian and civil society and upon letters. They assail them in every shape, going so far as to say of the clergy in general—"that being the enemies of the useful sciences, of progress, and of civilization, they ought to be deprived of the charge of, instructing and educating youth." Others, taking up wicked errors many times condemned, presume with notorious impudence to submit the authority of the church and of this Apostolic See, conferred upon it by God himself, to the judgment of civil authority, and to deny all the rights of this same church and this see with regard to exterior order. {2470} They do not blush to affirm that the laws of the church do not bind the conscience if they are not promulgated by the civil power; that the acts and decrees of the Roman Pontiffs concerning religion and the church require the sanction and approbation, or, at least, the assent, of the civil power; and that the Apostolic constitutions condemning secret societies, whether these exact, or do not exact, an oath of secrecy, and branding with anathema their secretaries and promoters, have no force in those regions of the world where these associations are tolerated by the civil government. It is likewise affirmed that the excommunications launched by the Council of Trent and the Roman Pontiffs against those who invade the possessions of the church and usurp its rights, seek, in confounding the spiritual and temporal powers, to attain solely a terrestrial object; that the church can decide nothing which may bind the consciences of the faithful in a temporal order of things; that the law of the church does not demand that violations of sacred laws should be punished by temporal penalties; and that it is in accordance with sacred theology and the principles of public law to claim for the civil government the property possessed by the churches, the religious orders, and other pious establishments. And they have no shame in avowing openly and publicly the thesis, the principle of heretics from whom emanate so many errors and perverse opinions. They say: "That the ecclesiastical power is not of right divine, distinct and independent from the civil power; and that no distinction, no independence of this kind can be maintained without the church invading and usurping the essential rights of the civil power." Neither can we pass over in silence the audacity of those who, insulting sound doctrines, assert that "the judgments and decrees of the Holy See, whose object is declared to concern the general welfare of the church, its rights, and its discipline, do not claim the acquaintance and obedience under pain of sin and loss of the Catholic profession, if they do not treat of the dogmas of faith and manners." How contrary is this doctrine to the Catholic dogma of the full power divinely given to the sovereign Pontiff by our Lord Jesus Christ, to guide, to supervise, and govern the universal church, no one can fail to see and understand clearly and evidently. Amid so great a diversity of depraved opinions, we, remembering our apostolic duty, and solicitous before all things for our most holy religion, for sound doctrine, for the salvation of the souls confided to us, and for the welfare of human society itself, have considered the moment opportune to raise anew our apostolic voice. And therefore do we condemn and proscribe generally and particularly all the evil opinions and doctrines specially mentioned in this letter, and we wish that they may be held as rebuked, proscribed, and condemned by all the children of the Catholic Church. But you know further, venerable brothers, that in our time insulters of every truth and of all justice, and violent enemies of our religion, have spread abroad other impious doctrines by means of pestilent books, pamphlets, and journals which, distributed over the surface of the earth, deceive the people and wickedly lie. You are not ignorant that in our day men are found who, animated and excited by the spirit of Satan, have arrived at that excess of impiety as not to fear to deny our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, and to attack his divinity with scandalous persistence. We cannot abstain from awarding you well-merited eulogies, venerable brothers, for all the care and zeal with which you have raised your episcopal voice against so great an impiety.

_Catalogue of the Principal Errors of Our Time Pointed Out in the Consistorial Allocutions, Encyclical and other Apostolical Letters of Pope Pius IX._

I.–PANTHEISM, NATURALISM, AND ABSOLUTE RATIONALISM.

1. There is no divine power, supreme being, wisdom, and providence distinct from the universality of things, and God is none other than the nature of things, and therefore immutable. In effect, God is in man, and in the world, and all things are God, and have the very substance of God. God is, therefore, one and the same thing with the world, and thence mind is confounded with matter, necessity with liberty of action, true with false, good with evil, just with unjust.

(See Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1802.)

2. All action of God upon man and the world should be denied.

(See Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1802.)

3. Human reason, without any regard to God, is the sole arbiter of true and false, good and evil; it is its own law in itself, and suffices by its natural force for the care of the welfare of men and nations.

(See Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1802.)

4. All the truths of religion are derived from the native strength of human reason, whence reason is the principal rule by which man can and must arrive at the knowledge of all truths of every kind.

(See Encyclicals, "Qui pluribus," November 9, 1840, and "Singulari quidem," March 17, 1850, and Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

5. Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to the continual and indefinite progress corresponding to the progress of human reason.

(See Encyclical, "Qui pluribus," November 9, 1846, and Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

6. Christian faith is in opposition to human reason, and divine revelation is not only useless but even injurious to the perfection of man.

(See Encyclical "Qui pluribus," November 9, 1846, and Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

7. The prophecies and miracles told and narrated in the sacred books are the fables of poets, and the mysteries of the Christian faith the sum of philosophical investigations. The books of the two Testaments contain fabulous fictions, and Jesus Christ is himself a myth.

(Encyclical, "Qui pluribus," November 9, 1846; Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

II. MODERATE RATIONALISM.

8. As human reason is rendered equal to religion itself, theological matters must be treated as philosophical matters.

(Allocution, "Singulari quidem perfusi.")

9. All the dogmas of the Christian religion are indistinctly the object of natural science or philosophy, and human reason, instructed solely by history, is able by its natural strength and principles to arrive at a comprehension of even the most abstract dogmas from the moment when they have been proposed as objective.

(Letter to Archbishop Frising, "Gravissimus," December 4, 1862. Letter to Archbishop Frising, "Tuas libenter," December 21, 1863.)

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10. As the philosopher is one thing and philosophy is another, it is the right and duty of the former to submit himself to the authority of which he shall have recognized the truth; but philosophy neither can nor ought to submit to authority.

(Letters to Archbishop Frising, "Gravissimus," December 11, 1862; and, "Tuas libenter," December 21, 1863.)

11. The church not only ought in no way to concern herself with philosophy, but ought further herself to tolerate the errors of philosophy, leaving to it the care of their correction.

(Letter to Archbishop Frising, December 11, 1862.)

12. The decrees of the Apostolic See and of the Roman congregation fetter the free progress of science.

(Letter to Archbishop Frising, December 11, 1862.)

13. The methods and principles by which the old scholastic doctors cultivated theology are no longer suitable to the demands of the age and the progress of science.

(Letter to Archbishop Frising, "Tuas libenter," December 21, 1863.)

14. Philosophy must be studied without taking any account of supernatural revelation.

(Letter to Archbishop Frising, "Tuas libenter," December 21, 1863.)

N. B.—To the rationalistic system are due in great part the errors of Antony Gunther, condemned in the letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne "Eximiam tuam," June 15, 1847, and in that to the Bishop of Breslau, "Dolore haud mediocri," April 30, 1860.

III.—INDIFFERENTISM, TOLERATION.

15. Every man is free to embrace and profess the religion he shall believe true, guided by the light of reason.

(Apostolic Letter, "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851; Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

16. Men who have embraced any religion may find and obtain eternal salvation.

(Encyclical, '"Qui pluribus," November 9, 1846; Allocution, "Ubi primum," December 17, 1847; Encyclical, "Singulari quidem," March 17, 1856.)

17. At least the eternal salvation may be hoped for of all who have never been in the true church of Christ.

(Allocution, "Singulari quidem," December 9, 1865; Encyclical, "Quanto conficiamur mœrore," August 17, 1863.)

18. Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true religion in which it is possible to be equally pleasing to God, as in the Catholic church.

(Encyclical, "Nescitis et vobiscum," December 8, 1849.)

IV.—SOCIALISM, COMMUNISM, CLANDESTINE SOCIETIES, BIBLICAL SOCIETIES, CLERICO-LIBERAL SOCIETIES.

Pests of this description have been frequently rebuked in the severest terms in the Encyclical, "Qui pluribus," November 9, 1846; Allocution, "Quibus, quantisque," August 20, 1849; Encyclical, "Nescitis et vobiscum," December 8, 1849; Allocution, "Singulari quidem," December 9, 1854; Encyclical, "Quanto conficiamur mœrore," August 10, 1863.

V.-ERRORS RESPECTING THE CHURCH AND HER RIGHTS.

19. The church is not a true and perfect entirely free association; she does not rest upon the peculiar and perpetual rights conferred upon her by her divine founder; but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights and limits within which the church may exercise authority.

(Allocutions, "Singulari quidem," December 9, 1854; "Multis gravibus," December 17, 1860; "Maxima quidem," June, 1862.)

20. The ecclesiastical power must not exercise its authority without the toleration and assent of the civil government.

(Allocution, "Meminit unusquisque," September 30, 1851.)

21. The church has not the power of disputing dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic church is the only true religion.

(Apostolic Letter, "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.)

22. The obligation which binds Catholic masters and writers does not apply to matters proposed for universal belief as articles of faith by the infallible judgment of the church.

(Letter to Archbishop Frising, "Tuas libenter," December 21, 1863.)

23. The church has not the power of availing herself of force, or any direct or indirect temporal power.

(Apostolic Letter, "Ad apostolicas," August 22, 1851.)

24. The Roman pontiffs and œcumenical councils have exceeded the limits of their power, have usurped the rights of princes, and have even committed errors in defining matter relating to dogma and morals.

(Apostolic Letter, "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.)

25. In addition to the authority inherent in the episcopate, further temporal power is granted to it by the civil power, either expressly or tacitly, but on that account also revocable by the civil power whenever it pleases.

(Apostolic Letter, "Ad Apostolicas," August 22, 1851.)

26. The church has not the natural and legitimate right of acquisition and possession.

("Nunquam," December 18, 1856; Encyclical, "Incredibili," September 17, 1862.)

27. The ministers of the church and the Roman pontiff ought to be absolutely excluded from all charge and dominion over temporal affairs.

(Allocution, "Maximum quidem," June 9, 1862.)

28. Bishops have not the right of promulgating their apostolical letters without the sanction of the government.

(Allocution, "Nunquam fore," December 15, 1856.)

29. Spiritual graces granted by the Roman pontiff must be considered null unless they have been requested by the civil government.

(Allocution, "Nunquam fore," December 15, 1856.)

30. The immunity of the church and of ecclesiastical persons derives its origin from civil law.

(Apostolic Letter, "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.)

31. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction for temporal lawsuits, whether civil or criminal, of the clergy, should be abolished, even without the consent and against the desire of the Holy See.

(Allocution, "Acerbissimum," September 27, 1852; Allocution, "Nunquam fore," December 15, 1856.)