Quanta cura

Quanta cura (Latin for "With how great care") was a papal encyclical issued by Pope Pius IX on 8 December 1864. In it, he decried what he considered significant errors afflicting the modern age. These he listed in an attachment called the Syllabus of Errors, which condemned secularism and religious indifferentism.

Context

In August 1863, Count Charles Montalembert, a proponent of Liberal Catholicism gave a series of speeches in Mechelen, Belgium, in which he presented his view of the future of modern society and the Church. His first speech aimed to show the necessity of Christianizing the democracy by accepting modern liberties. His second speech dealt with liberty of conscience, and the conclusion he drew was that the Church could be in perfect harmony with religious liberty and with the modern state founded on that liberty, and that everyone is free to hold that the modern state is to be preferred to those which preceded it, such as Ancien Régime France. He received support from Engelbert Sterckx, Archbishop of Mechelen, and Félix Dupanloup, Bishop of Orléans. But Louis-Édouard-François-Desiré Pie, Bishop of Poitiers, the papal nuncio to Belgium Bishop Mieczysław Halka-Ledóchowski, and the Jesuits who edited the "Civiltà Cattolica" were alarmed at these declarations. At the end of March 1864, he received a letter from Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, Secretary of State, that criticized the Mechelen speeches.

Quanta cura was prompted by the September Convention of 1864 between the emerging Kingdom of Italy and the Second French Empire of Napoleon III. French troops had occupied Rome to prevent the Kingdom of Italy from capturing the city, defeating the Papal States, and completing the unification of the Italian Peninsula under its rule. Italians supporting the Risorgimento (unification) viewed the French troops as an occupying army, and in the 1864 Convention, France agreed to withdraw its military garrison from Rome to France in anticipation of war with Prussia.

Pius IX closed his encyclical with a plenary indulgence by declaring a Jubilee year for 1865.

Opposition to unrestrained freedom of conscience

Pius reaffirms his predecessor's condemnation of liberty of conscience. In the 1832 encyclical Mirari Vos, Pope Gregory XVI deplored religious indifferentism which

Pius IX's 1864 encyclical specifically condemned the idea that:

Propositions condemned

Quanta cura also condemns several other propositions, notably:

That "the people’s will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control";
That "in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right."
That "that permission should be refused to citizens and to the Church, whereby they may openly give alms for the sake of Christian charity”;
That laws should be abolished which require that “on certain fixed days servile works are prohibited because of God’s worship;”;
That "on civil law alone depend all rights of parents over their children, and especially that of providing for education.”
That “the Church’s laws do not bind in conscience unless when they are promulgated by the civil power;”
That Religious orders have no legitimate reason for being permitted to exist.”

These propositions were aimed at anticlerical governments in various European countries, which were in the process of secularizing education (sometimes by taking over Catholic schools rather than starting their own competing public schools), and suppressing religious orders while confiscating their property. (Hales 1958)

Subsequent commentary

John Henry Newman

John Henry Newman comments on this passage in part 5 of his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (1874), entitled "Conscience", which precedes part 6, "The Encyclical of 1864"[1]:

William George McCloskey

Regarding the issues of civil control of education, and the separation of church and state, William George McCloskey first rector of the American College at Rome (and later Bishop of Louisville, Kentucky) observed wryly,

Syllabus of Errors

Quanta cura is remembered mostly because alongside it appeared the Syllabus of Errors, which condemns a number of political, religious, and philosophical ideas including liberalism, modernism, moral relativism, secularization, and religious freedom.

References

External links

Text of Quanta cura (1741)
Text of Quanta cura (1864)
Quanta Cura & The Syllabus of Errors public domain audiobook at LibriVox