Folio 450

Pius IX, 1846-1878

printed p. 418 · pdf p. 450

tricks of sleepwalking and of clear-gazing, as they call it, carried away by delusions and gestures not always modest, proclaim that they see the invisible, and they pretend with rash boldness to hold talks even about religion, to evoke the souls of the dead, to receive answers, to reveal the unknown and the distant, and to practice other superstitious things of that sort, intending to acquire great gain for themselves and for their masters through their divining. Therefore, in all these, whatever art or illusion they employ, since physical media are used for unnatural effects, there is deception altogether illicit and heretical, and a scandal against honesty of morals.1

The False Doctrine of Anton Guenther 2

[From the Brief, "Eximiam tuam" to Cardinal de Geissel, Archbishop of Cologne, June 15, 1857]

1655. Not without sorrow are We especially aware that in these books that erroneous and most dangerous system of rationalism, often condemned by this Apostolic See, is particularly dominant; and likewise we know that in the same books these items among many others are found, which are not a little at variance with the Catholic Faith and with the true explanation of the unity of the divine substance in three distinct, eternal Persons. Likewise, we have found that neither better nor more accurate are the statements made about the mystery of the Incarnate Word, and about the unity of the divine Person of the Word in two natures, divine and human. We know that in the same books there is harm to the Catholic opinion and teaching concerning man, who is so composed of body and soul that the soul, and that rational, may of itself be the true and immediate form of the body.3 And we are not unaware that in the

  1. Cf. the Response of the Sacred Office, July 26, 1899, about the experiments of hypnotism [Compilation of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, II (1907) n. 2061]. ↩

  2. ASS 8 (1874) 446 f.; Aexq 166 f.; AP II 587 f.; RskRP IV 383 f.; ACol 241; Analecta Iuris Pontificii, II, 1445 f.—Anton Guenther, born Nov. 17, 1783, in the town of Lindenau, Bohemia, was ordained a priest in 1820; he lived at Vienna from 1824 until his death Feb. 24, 1863, and wrote while there various philosophical and theological works. His works were stopped by a decree of the Sacred Congregation of the Index, promulgated on Jan. 8, 1857, and approved by the Supreme Pontiff on Feb. 17, 1857, to which decree the author submitted in a praiseworthy manner. But when certain followers of Guenther, because his opinions were not enumerated individually in that general decree, took occasion from it to think that he was permitted to persist in them, the Supreme Pontiff in a letter sent to the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne noted individually the errors of Guenther in these words. ↩

  3. PIUS IX in the letter, "Dolore haud mediocri," to the Bishop of Wratislava (Breslau) on the 30th of April, 1860, declares: "The opinion which places in man one principle of life namely the rational soul, from which the body also receives movement, ↩