I have argued that Pope Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors (l864),
which liberal Catholics think is one of the great
embarrassments in the history of the papacy, is in fact a
prophetic document. Nonetheless, there are things in it which
need to be addressed. The pope condemned the idea that, "The
Church ought to be separated from the State and the State
from the Church," and the proposition that, "In the present
day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion
should be held as the only religion of the State, to the
exclusion of all other forms of worship." He rejected the
claim that Catholic states should grant religious freedom and
that non-Catholics should be allowed to disseminate their
beliefs. Some of the ideas which Pius IX condemned were in
effect endorsed by the Second Vatican Council in its Decree
on Religious Liberty, which demonstrates that the Syllabus
was not an exercise of papal infallibility. Taken as general
principles, it is impossible to defend the above
condemnations, not least because they do contradict the
solemn words of an ecumenical council, approved by a later
pope. But if one recalls the environment in which Pius IX was
writing, I think it is easy to see why he took the positions
he did. The demand for religious liberty had arisen on the
continent of Europe as part of the French Revolution, and it
was one of the ideas of the Revolution which was implemented
throughout the nineteenth century. But it was from the
beginning often a hypocritical demand. The French Revolution
relentlessly persecuted the Church in the name of freedom,
and various 19th-century governments, notably in France
itself, proclaimed liberty even as they tightened the screws
on the Church seizing its property or closing its
schools, for example. Thus Pius IX quite accurately saw the
liberal governments of his day as sworn enemies of the Church
and the rhetoric of religious freedom as a rationalization of
persecution. For him to have embraced the principle of
religious liberty would have been to surrender to governments
whom he knew quite well did not practice what they
proclaimed. There were two notable exceptions In Europe,
England had more religious freedom than any other country.
But, ironically, it did not have separation of church and
state. The great exception, of course, was the United States,
and here I think Pius simply was not paying much attention.
He had the habit, based on centuries of history, of viewing
the world through conditions in Europe. But, to the degree
that the Pope did know about conditions in the United States,
he knew that even here religious liberty was accompanied by
sometimes violent anti-Catholicism. It was necessary for the
modern liberal state itself to evolve before the Church could
embrace the principle of religious liberty. To have endorsed
it earlier would have required extraordinary detachment from
the actual conditions of society. Pius's defense of the
papacy's "temporal power" its possessing independent
territorial status and political authority was
dictated by his realistic fear that without such power the
Church could not protect itself against hostile governments.
Certain other passages in the Syllabus should, I think, be
read very strictly. Thus the pope denied that Protestantism
pleases God "equally with the Catholic Church," a warning
compatible with Vatican II's Decree on Ecumenism. Pius also
proclaimed that it was unlawful to rebel against "legitimate
princes," which merely seems to be a truism. since all
rebellions obviously claim that the government in power is
illegitimate. But if conditions in 1864 were such that Pius
IX could not view the world situation with complete
detachment, there is a further troubling question are
modern liberal governments really as benign as we think they
are, or is the proclamation of universal freedom still
sometimes used to suppress the rights of those who deviate
from official policy? The jury is still out in that question.
Hitchcock is professor of history at St. Louis University.
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