No Animosity in Soul

Last week in the Vatican a huge intricately carved bronze door, one half of which had been closed since 1870, was slowly pushed wide open. Thus by symbolism, long a power and fascination of the Roman Catholic Church, did Pope Pius XI announce to the world and to the city the consummation of Italy's Church-&-State reconciliation, the ultimate and formal exchange of signed treaties (see p. 25).

Pleasing though the diplomatic condition of Vatican City might be to Pius XI he was troubled last week by statements of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini about the Roman Catholic Church. Mussolini, speaking to the Italian Chamber of Deputies, had snapped:

"In the Italian State the Church is not sovereign or even free. It is not sovereign because that would be a contradiction. It is not even free because its institutions and its men are subject to the general laws of the country. . . . The State is sovereign in the Italian kingdom, the Catholic Church holds certain loyally and voluntarily recognized privileges, and all other religions are freely admitted. . . ."

Severe was the point-by-point rebuke which Pope Pius administered to Mussolini's assertions. Said he, in the quasi-official Vatican newspaper I'Osservatore Romano:

"It is always the Supreme Pontiff who intervenes and negotiates in the fullness of the sovereignty of the Catholic Church, which he does not represent but personifies by direct Divine mandate. It is not, therefore, the Catholic organization in Italy which would be subject to the sovereignty of the State but the Pontiff himself, the supreme authority of the Church. ... If there were the least animosity and bitterness in our soul we would say that these not infrequent expressions of no renunciation, of no concession from the State to the Church offend us."

It must, said he, be "clearly and loyally understood that the Catholic religion and the Catholic religion alone is the State religion . . . not merely one of the many tolerated or permitted religions. . . . The Fascist State, both where doctrine and ideas are concerned [should] refuse to admit anything which is not in agreement with Catholic doctrine and Catholic action. For without these the Catholic State could not exist."

Decidedly not in "agreement with Catholic doctrine" had been the Mussolini statement that "the Catholic religion was born in Palestine but became Catholic in Rome. If it had remained in Palestine it would probably have been one of the many sects which nourish in that heated atmosphere like the essence of therapeutics, and it would have nickered out without leaving a trace."

Of that Pope Pius said "we least of all expected heretical and worse than heretical expressions as to the very essence of Christianity and Catholicism. Distinguishing between historical and doctrinal affirmations would be in the manner of the worst and most condemnable modernism."

Over the head of onetime Atheist Mussolini last week hovered therefore the charge of heresy and heresy is punishable by excommunication.