Religion: Non Licet!

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A tall, lean, sad-eyed man sat at his desk last week in his summer palace at Castel Gandolfo near Rome. Before him was the text of a 13,000-word document which he had written and re-written three times in longhand. Pope Pius XII made some final corrections, sent the document off to the Vatican printers. It was his first encyclical, long delayed by the seismic events of World War II. Non-Catholics as well as Catholics waited to hear it as the keynote of the Holy Father's reign. Two days later the encyclical, entitled, from its first two words, Summi Pontificatus ("Of the Supreme Pontificate"), was released to the world.

In its English translation by Monsignor Patrick Hurley of the Papal Secretariat of State, the encyclical was a lofty and solemn statement of Christian, rather than exclusively Catholic, doctrines for a world beset with "difficulties, anxieties and trials." He mentioned by name only two nations, "our dear Italy" and "our dear Poland." The great body of his encyclical Pius XII devoted to an examination of the "spiritual and moral bankruptcy of the present day," and of two "errors" in particular which menace "the peaceful intercourse of peoples."

Said the Holy Father: "A full statement of the doctrinal stand to be taken in the face of errors today, if necessary, can be put off to another time less disturbed by calamitous external events"—an indication that after the war he might call an ecumenical council to define such errors. In continuation of the policies of his predecessor, Pius XII identified as errors: 1) racism, and 2) totalitarianism. Of the first: "The Church of Christ . . . cannot, and does not, think of deprecating or disdaining the particular characteristics which each people with jealous and intelligible pride cherishes. . . . Her aim is a supernatural union in all-embracing love."

Of the State: "To consider the State as something ultimate to which everything else should be subordinated and directed cannot fail to harm the true and lasting prosperity of nations. . . . Before us stand out with painful clarity the dangers that will accrue to this and coming generations from the neglect or nonrecognition, the minimizing and the gradual abolition of rights peculiar to the family. . . . The stress of our times . . . and countless repercussions are tasted by none so bitterly as that noble little cell, the family."

Declaring that "many turn their gaze with renewed hope to the Church, the rock of truth and of charity," Pius XII nevertheless took note that, to many, the precepts of the Church are "an object of suspicion, as if they shook the foundations of civil authority or usurped its rights." This the Pope denied. But he forthrightly marked off the Church's stand when he said: "So many noble minds separated from us ... are recognizing in the Catholic Church principles of belief and life that have stood the test of two thousand years . . . [the Church] is generous in its material condescension toward all, but firm when, even at the costs of torments of martyrdom, it has to say: 'Non licet! It is not allowed.' "