Pius IX, 1846-1878

order, by the very fact that they have been consummated, have the force of right." But who does not see and plainly understand that a society of men who are released from the bonds of religion and of true justice can have no other aim, surely, than the goal of amassing and heaping up wealth, and that it (society) can follow no other law in its actions except an uncontrolled cupidity of soul, a slave to its own pleasures and advantages?

1692. Therefore, men of this sort pursue with bitter hatred religious orders, no matter how supremely deserving because of their Christian, civil, and literary work; and they cry out that these same orders have no legitimate reason for existing, and in this way approve the falsehoods of heretics. For, as Our predecessor of recent memory, PIUS VI, very wisely taught, "abolition of the regulars wounds the status of the public profession of the evangelical counsels; it injures the way of life approved in the Church as suitable to the apostolic teaching; it harms the most distinguished founders whom we venerate on our altars, who established these orders only when inspired by God." ¹

1693. And they also make the impious pronouncement that from the citizens and the Church must be taken away the power "by which they can ask for alms openly in the cause of Christian charity," and also that the law should be repealed "by which on some fixed days, because of the worship of God, servile works are prohibited," pretending most deceitfully that the said power and law obstruct the principles of the best public economy. And, not content with removing religion from public society, they wish even to banish religion itself from private families.

1694. For, teaching and professing that most deadly error of communism and socialism, they assert that "domestic society or the family borrows the whole reason for its existence from the civil law alone; and, hence, all rights of parents over their children, especially the right of caring for their instruction and education, emanate from and depend wholly on the civil law."

1695. In these impious opinions and machinations these most deceitful men have this particular intention: that the saving doctrine and power of the Catholic Church be entirely eliminated from the instruction and training of youth, and that the tender and impressionable minds of youths may be unfortunately infected and ruined by every pernicious error and vice. For, all who have tried to disturb not only the ecclesiastical but also the public welfare, and to overturn the just order of society, and to destroy all rights, divine and human, have always formed all their evil plans, studies, and work to deceive and deprave especially unsuspecting youth, as we have intimated above, and have placed all their hopes in the cor-