Pius XI, 1922-1939

Response: In the negative, and that the method must be preserved entirely as set forth up to the present by the Church and saintly men, and recommended by the Most Holy Father in the Encyclical Letter, "On the Christian Education of Youth," given on the 31st day of December, 1929 [see n. 2214]. Naturally, care must especially be taken that a full and solid religious instruction be given to the youth of both sexes without interruption; in this instruction there must be aroused a regard, desire, and love for the angelic virtue; and especially must it be inculcated upon them to insist on prayer, to be constant in the sacraments of penance and the most Holy Eucharist, to be devoted to the Blessed Virgin, Mother of holy purity, with filial devotion and to commit themselves wholly to her protection; to avoid carefully dangerous reading, obscene plays, association with the wicked, and all occasions of sin.

By no means, then, can we approve what has been written and published in defense of the new method especially in these recent times, even on the part of some Catholic authors.

2252. II) What is to be thought of the so-called theory of "eugenics," whether "positive" or "negative," and of the means indicated by it to bring human progeny to a better state, disregarding the laws either natural or divine or ecclesiastical which concern the rights of the individual to matrimony?

Response: That this theory is to be entirely disapproved, and held as false and condemned, as in the Encyclical Letter on Christian marriage, "Casti connubii," dated on the 31st day of December, 1930 [see n. 2245 f.].

The Authority of the Church in Social and Economic Affairs¹

[From the Encyclical, "Quadragesimo anno," May 15, 1931]

2253. The principle which Leo XIII clearly established long ago must be layed down, that there rest in us the right and the duty of passing judgment with supreme authority on these social and economic problems.² . . . For, although economic affairs and moral discipline make use of their own principles, each in its own sphere, nevertheless, it is false to say that the economic and the moral order are so distinct and alien to each other that the former in no way depends on the latter.