714 



ROMAN CATHOLIC CHUECH. 



never feel reassured as to the freedom and indepen- 

 dence of his acts. * * * 



What avails it that the door of our domicile be 

 not closed against our exit, once we could not is- 

 sue forth without witnessing impious and revolting 

 scenes, without exposing ourself to insult at the 

 hands of people gathered hither to foment immoral- 

 ity and disorder, without incurring the peril of ren- 

 dering ourself an involuntary cause of contention 

 amid citizens! What matters promising personal 

 guarantees to the high dignitaries of the Church, 

 when they are obliged even to conceal, when in the 

 streets, the insignia of their dignity, in order not to 

 be liable to every style of bad treatment ; when the 

 ministers of God and the most sacred things are ob- 

 jects of derision and of mockery, so that it be not 

 frequently even expedient to perform, in public, the 

 most august ceremonies of our holy religion ; when, 

 finally, the sacred pastors of the Catholic world, 

 who are, from time to time, obliged to come to Eome 

 to report upon the affairs of their respective church- 

 es, may find themselves exposed, without any royal 

 guarantee, to the like insults and, possibly, even to 

 similar dangers ! 



The following allocution of the Pope to the 

 Cardinals, delivered December 22, 1872, is the 

 great official act of the year : 



VENERABLE BROTHERS: The just and merciful 

 Lord, whose judgments are inscrutable^ and whose 

 ways are not to be scanned, permits this Apostolic 

 See, and the whole Church in union with it, to groan 

 under a long and cruel persecution. Our and your 

 condition, venerable brothers, has not been changed, 

 but rather is daily aggravated since the occupation 

 of our provinces, and especially since, two years ago, 

 this glorious city was withdrawn from our paternal 

 rule. The experience of our yoke has taught us 

 how correctly, from the beginning of this persecu- 

 tion promoted by the machinations of wicked sects, 

 and perpetrated and carried on by their disciples at 

 the head of public affairs, we frequently, in our allo- 

 cutions and apostolic letters, have asserted openly 

 that the sovereign rights of our secular princedom 

 were attacked with so much force, for no other rea- 

 son than that so a way might be laid toward abolish- 

 ing, if that could be done, the spiritual authority in 

 which the successors of Peter are glorious, and to 

 obliterate the Catholic Church, and the very name 

 of Christ Himself, living and reigning in it. Very 

 clearly, indeed, has that been shown by the hostile 

 acts of the sub- Alpine Government, especially by 

 those iniquitous laws, by which even the clerics, 

 torn from the foot of the altars and deprived of their 

 immunity, have been summoned to the military ser- 

 vice ; by which even bishops have been deprived of 

 the right of teaching youth, and their seminaries 

 have been closed. Still this purpose of theirs shall 

 be made still more clear by us. In this very city the 

 religious congregations are disturbed under our own 

 eyes, or violently driven out from their houses, and 

 the property of the Church subjected to an enor- 

 mous tribute, and handed over to the disposition of 

 the civil authority. Even now there has been pro- 

 posed in the Legislative Chamber, as they call it, a 

 law not wholly dissimilar from that which, notwith- 

 standing our protest and solemn condemnation, has 

 already been put into execution in other parts of 

 Italy, which must extinguish, even here in the cen- 

 tre of Catholic faith, the religious congregations, 

 and confiscate the goods of the Church and offer 

 them at public auction. But this law if, indeed, 

 we can honor by such a name a decree so repulsive 

 to natural, divinej and social right is much more 

 iniquitous and criminal in Eome and the adjacent 

 provinces. It injures more deeply and sorely the 

 rights and possessions of the universal Church. It 

 attacks the very foundation of the true social civili- 

 zation, which the religious orders, with unceasing 

 labor and equal courage and constancy, have pro- 



moted and perfected, not only in -our territory, but 

 which they have brought and still bring to foreign 

 and barbarous nations, despising difficulties, dangers, 

 losses, even life itself. In fine, this law attacks the 

 rights and privileges of our Apostolate, since, if the 

 religious houses were obliterated or notably reduced, 

 and the secular clergy reduced to destitution and 

 gradually diminishing in numbers owing to the mili- 

 tary conscription, not only here as elsewhere would 

 there be wanting those who should break the bread 

 of life to the people, who should administer the 

 sacraments to the faithfuljWho should teach the young 

 and strengthen them against the innumerable snares 

 daity laid for them, but the Eoman Pontiff would be 

 deprived of those aids which, as the universal master 

 and pastor, he so much needs for the government of 

 the entire Church. 



The spoliation of the Eoman Church would in- 

 clude thosejreasures which have been gathered here 

 and placed in this centre of unity by the generosity 

 of all Catholics rather than by the gift of our own 

 people. And so those treasures which were brought 

 here for the use and increase of the universal Church 

 will be impiously converted to the use of others. 

 Scarcely had we learned that one of the ministers of 

 the sub-Alpine Government had signified tq the 

 Legislative Assembly his purpose of submitting to 

 it a law of this kind, than we exposed its monstrous 

 character through a letter of the 16th day of June of 

 this year (1872), addressed to our Cardinal Secretary 

 of State, and we commanded him that he should 

 make known to the ambassadors of the foreign 

 princes near the Holy See this new danger impend- 

 ing over us. Nevertheless, as the threatened law 

 has been proposed, the duty of our Apostolate re- 

 quires that we should renew with a louder voice the 

 expostulations already made in your presence, ven- 

 erable brothers, and before the universal Church. 

 Execrating this nefarious crime, in the name of 

 Jesus Christ, whose vicar we are on earth, we con- 

 demn it by the authority of the hoty apostles Peter 

 and Paul, and by our own, together with any scheme 

 of law which shall arrogate to itself the power of 

 disturbing the religious orders in Eome and the ad- 

 jacent provinces, and of depriving the Church there 

 of its property and disposing of it for the benefit of 

 the treasury or otherwise. We therefore pronounce 

 invalid whatever is done against the rights and pat- 

 rimony of the Church. We declare absolutely void 

 and null any acquisition, by any title, of the stolen 

 goods, against alienation of which this Apostolic 

 See will never cease to protest. Let the authors and 

 supporters of this law remember the censures and 

 spiritual punishments which, ipso facto incurred, the 

 apostolic constitutions inflict on the invaders of the 

 rights of the Church, and, pitying their souls bound 

 by these spiritual chains, let them cease to lay up 

 treasures of anger against the day of wrath, and of 

 the revelation of the just judgment of God. 



The very bitter grief with which we are afflicted, 

 on account of these and the other injuries wrought 

 against the Church throughout Italy, has been not 

 lightly increased by the cruel persecutions to which 

 it is subject elsewhere, especially in the new German 

 Empire, where not only by secret machinations, 

 but also by open force, they attempt to subvert it 

 from the very foundation, since men who not only 

 do not profess our holy religion, but do not even 

 know it, claim for themselves the ri^ht of defining 

 the dogmas and rights of the Catholic Church, and 

 while they disturb her they have the audacity to 

 declare that they do her no injury. Moreover, add- 

 ing calumny and derision to injury, they do not 

 hesitate to attribute this cruel persecution to the 

 fault of the Catholics, forsooth ; that their prelates 

 and priesthood, together with the faithful, refuse to 

 prefer the laws and will of the civil empire to the 

 holy laws of God and the Church, and to abstain 

 from their religious duty. 



Would that the guides of public affairs, taught 

 by a long experience, might bo persuaded that nono 



