Pius IX, 1846-1878

1817. 2. If anyone shall have said that the human sciences should be treated with such liberty that their assertions, although opposed to revealed doctrine, can be retained as true, and cannot be proscribed by the Church: let him be anathema [cf. n. 1797-1799].

1818. 3. If anyone shall have said that it is possible that to the dogmas declared by the Church a meaning must sometimes be attributed according to the progress of science, different from that which the Church has understood and understands: let him be anathema [cf. n. 1800].

1819. And so, fulfilling the obligation of Our supreme pastoral office, by the incarnation of Jesus Christ We beseech all the faithful of Christ, but especially those who have charge of, or who perform the duty of teaching; and in fact, by the authority of Our same God and Savior, We command that they bring their zeal and labor to arrest and banish these errors from Holy Church, and to extend the light of a most pure faith.

1820. But, since it is not sufficient to shun heretical iniquity unless these errors also are shunned which come more or less close to it, we remind all of the duty of observing also the constitutions and decrees by which base opinions of this sort, which are not enumerated explicitly here, have been proscribed and prohibited by this Holy See.

Session IV (July 18, 1870)¹

Dogmatic Constitution I on the Church of Christ

1821. [The institution and foundation of the Church]. "The eternal Pastor and Bishop of our souls" [I Pet. 2:25], in order to render the saving work of redemption perennial, willed to build a holy Church, in which, as in the house of the living God, all the faithful might be contained by the bond of one faith and charity. Therefore, before His glory was made manifest, "He asked the Father, not only for the Apostles but also for those who would believe through their word in Him, that all might be one, just as the Son Himself and the Father are one" [John 17:20 f.]. Thus, then, as He sent the apostles, whom He had selected from the world for Himself, as He himself had been sent by the Father [John 20:21], so in His Church He wished the pastors and the doctors to be "even to the consummation of the world" [Matt. 28:20]. But, that the episcopacy itself might be one and undivided, and that the entire multitude of the faithful through priests closely connected with one another might be preserved in the unity of faith and communion, placing the blessed Peter over the other apostles He established in him the perpetual principle and visible foundation of both unities, upon whose strength the eternal temple might be erected, and the sublimity of the Church to