The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-12-10


honors and monuments are decreed to those
who have suffered by legal trial and sentence
the just punishment Of most heinous crimes;
many ministers of the Church, against whom
every species of odium is stirred up are
hsrsssed with all kinds of insult, and some
of them are stricken and wounded by
THE BLOWS OF TREAoHKRoUs AssAss1Ns;
some religious houses have been subjected
to illegal search our Quirinal palaces have
been broken into; and from his residence in
one of them a Roman cardinal has been
roughly thrust cut by violent orders; and
other ecclesiastios of our household have been
shut out of their use, and subjected to
moleststion laws and DEGREES have been put
forth which avowedly injure and destroy the
liberty, immunity, property, and lawful rights
of the Church of God; and all these most
terrible evils, unless God avert it, we grieve
to see, are likely to progress; and we, mean
while, are hindered by reason of our present
position from applying any remedy, and are
every day more rudely reminded of the cap
tivity in which we are held, and of the absence
Of that full liberty which is pretended in
lying words to be left US for the exercise of
our apostolic ministry over the world, and is
professed to be meant to be secured to us
with safeguards Gas they are called) by the
intruding Government.
We cannot here, venerable brethren, pass
crime which without doubt is known to you
As though the possessions and rights of the
Apostolic See, sacred and inviolable by so
many titles, and respected during so many
centuries, could be to-day controverted and
disputed, and as though the grave censures
which are incurred tpsO tactO and without
fresh declarations from the violators of these
rights and possessions could lose their force
by rebellion and popular audacity, they have
had recourse to cover the sacriegious spo-
liation we have suffered in spite of the COM
mon law of nature and of nations, they have
had recourse (we say to
THE SHOW AND COMEDY OF A pLEB1scIrE,
already employed when the other provinces
were robbed from us. And those who are in
the habit of rejoicing in the worst actions did
not blush to parade, as in triumph, through
the towns of Italy rebellion and contempt of
ecclesiastical censures, thus insulting the
true sentiments of the great majority of
Italians, whose religion and fidelity towards
us and towards the Holy Church, forcibly
repressed in all sorts of ways, cannot have
free course.
AS to ourselves. charged by God to rule
and govern the whole house of Israel and
made the supreme defender of religion of
justice, and of the rights of the Church, in
order that we be not reproached before God
and before the Church for having been
I Sileut, anu lOr udNluS ny our Slleuce con-
sented to this unjust revolution, renewing
and confirming that which we have already
| declared in the allocutions, encyclicals, and
! briefs above mentioned, and recently in the
protestation which, by our order and in our
name, the Cardinal-Secretary of State COM
municated on the 20th of September to the
ambassadors, ministers, and charges daffaires
of foreign nations accredited to us and to
this Holy See, we declare anew before you,
uan nrohl Ia hrat xuith oil
lemnity, that it is our intention, resolution,
and will to retain in their integrity, intact
| and inviolable, all the dominions and rights
of this Holy See, and so to transmit them to
our successors; that oil usurpation of these
rights, whether of recent or of an earlier
date, is unjust, violent, null, and void; and
that the acts of the rebels and invaders,
already accomplished or still to be accom-
| plished, with the view of confirming in what
evermanner this usurpation, are by us from
this m oment condemned, annulled, quashed,
and abrogated.t We moreover declare, and we
protest before God and before the Catholic
world, that
WE ARE IN SUCH CAPTIVITY
as to render it altogether impossible for us to
exercise our pastoral authority with security,
ease, and freedom. Finally, following the
advice of st. Paul:-"QuB parttcipatiO IN
juStitia cum intquitate? aut que 8oc5etas luci
| al tene6rdS! d! que 0utem c0nCeRtiO ChrSStG al
BeGdL?" q Cor. vi, IA, 15)-we announce
and publicly and openly declare that, faithful
to our Office and to the solemn oath whic b
binds us, we neither consent nor Will consent
to any project of Cancellation which may in
any manner whatever destroy or lessen our
rights, which are the rights of God and of
the Holy See; and we likewise profess that
we are ready, thanks to the Divine assistance,
and in spite of our great age, to drink to the
| dregs for the Church of Jesus Christ
the chalice which he first deigned to
drink for her, and that we will never
co nmit the fault of yielding to, or ac-
quiescing in, the uni ust demands which are ad-
dressed to us. For, as our predecessor Plus
VII said:-'To do violence to this sovereign
empire of the Apostolic See, to separate the
temporal power from the spiritual, to disjoiu,
to tear asunder, and to cut up by the roots
the offices of pastor and of prince, is nothing
else but to desire to ruin and destroy the
work of God; nothing else but to labor for
the greatest injury to religion; is nothing else
but to deprivei it of most efficacious bulwark,
so that the supreme ruler, pastor, aud vicar
of God may not have it in his power TO give
to Catholics who, scattered all over the world,
ask of him aid and succor, that help which
they claim from his spiritual power, and
which no enc may hinder"
But since our admonitions, expostulations
and protests have been without effect, by the
authority of Almighty God of the holy Apos-
ties Peter and Paul, and by our own, we de-
clare to you, venerable brethren, and by you
to the whole Church, that all those who have
perpetrated the invasion, usurpation, and oc-
cupation of any of the provinces of our do
! mini0n and Of This Our halnuad oifV or haya