a situation of legal privilege. The amendment was rejected. The laconic reason advanced by the Secretariat read: "It is a question of a true principle." The response was not wholly adequate. The text of the schema was, in fact, an implicit citation from the Encyclical Letter of Leo XIII to the French Cardinals, Notre consolation (May 3,1892). In it he defends himself against the charge that his policy of ralliement in France was inconsistent with the policy of opposition that he was adopting toward the government of Italy?the former policy being religious in inspiration; the latter, political. The policies, he replies, are profoundly consistent, since "the question which concerns us in Italy is also eminently religious in as much as it is related to the fundamental principle of the freedom of the Church," 9 which was also the principle at stake in France. The freedom of the Church is not merely a true principle; it is the fundamental principle governing the relations of the Church with all governments. This is not the place to explain in detail what the formula "the freedom of the Church" meant to Gregory VII within the context of medieval Christendom. The Vatican Declaration, however, gives an adequate explanation of what the freedom of the Church concretely means today. In an implicit citation from Pius XII it is said to mean "that stable condition of right and of fact [which guarantees] the necessary independence [of the Church] in the fulfilment of her divine mission" (n. 13).