The Syllabus of Errors is the name given to a document issued by the Holy See under Pope Pius IX on 8 December 1864, as an appendix to his encyclical letter Quanta cura . [1] It condemns a total of 80 propositions that the Pope considered to be errors or heresies.
The Syllabus was intended to be a rebuttal of liberalism, modernism, moral relativism, secularization, and the political emancipation of Europe from the tradition of Catholic monarchies. [2]
The Syllabus is made up of phrases and paraphrases from earlier papal documents, along with index references to them, presenting a list of "condemned propositions". The Syllabus does not explain why each particular proposition is wrong, but cites earlier documents considering each subject.
The Syllabus is divided into ten sections on the following topics:
The Syllabus cites a number of previous documents that had been written during Pius's papacy. These include: Qui pluribus , Maxima quidem, Singulari quadam , Tuas libenter , Multiplices inter , Quanto conficiamur , Noscitis , Nostis et nobiscum , Meminit unusquisque , Ad Apostolicae , Nunquam fore , Incredibili , Acerbissimum , Singularis nobisque , Multis gravibusque , Quibus quantisque , Quibus luctuosissimis , In consistoriali , Cum non sine , Cum saepe , Quanto conficiamur , Jamdudum cernimus , Novos et ante , Quibusque vestrum and Cum catholica .
In 1874, the British Leader of the Opposition William Gladstone published a tract entitled The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Political Expostulation , in which he said that after the Syllabus
no one can now become [Rome's] convert without renouncing his moral and mental freedom, and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another.
Catholic apologists such as Félix Dupanloup and John Henry Newman said that the Syllabus was widely misinterpreted by readers who did not have access to, or did not bother to check, the original documents of which it was a summary. The propositions listed had been condemned as erroneous opinions in the sense and context in which they originally occurred; without the original context, the document appeared to condemn a larger range of ideas than it actually did. Thus, it was asserted that no critical response to the Syllabus could be valid, if it did not take into account the cited documents and their context. Newman writes:
The Syllabus then has no dogmatic force; it addresses us, not in its separate portions, but as a whole, and is to be received from the Pope by an act of obedience, not of faith, that obedience being shown by having recourse to the original and authoritative documents, (Allocutions and the like,) to which the Syllabus pointedly refers. Moreover, when we turn to those documents, which are authoritative, we find the Syllabus cannot even be called an echo of the Apostolic Voice; for, in matters in which wording is so important, it is not an exact transcript of the words of the Pope, in its account of the errors condemned, just as would be natural in what is an index for reference. [3]
As the English Catholic historian E. E. Y. Hales explained, concerning item #77:
"[T]he Pope is not concerned with a universal principle, but with the position in a particular state at a particular date. He is expressing his 'wonder and distress' (no more) that in a Catholic country (Spain) it should be proposed to disestablish the Church and to place any and every religion upon a precisely equal footing. [...] Disestablishment and toleration were far from the normal practice of the day, whether in Protestant or in Catholic states." [4]
Newman points out that this item refers to the 26 July 1855 allocution Nemo vestrum. At this time, Spain had been in violation of its Concordat of 1851 with the Holy See (implemented 1855). [5] [6]
In the 21 November 1873 encyclical, Etsi multa ("On the Church in Italy, Germany, and Switzerland"), which is often appended to the Syllabus, Pius expresses further thoughts in the same vein. The Pope particularly condemned the recent rise of Spanish-style liberalism and anti-clericalism in South America, which shares the same tradition of hostility to granting religious toleration and allowing Classical Christian education rooted in the Trivium with mainstream Republicanism in France, for unleashing "a ferocious war on the Church".
In 1907, Lamentabili sane exitu was promulgated, a "Syllabus condemning the errors of the Modernists", being a list of errors made by Progressive scholars of biblical criticism. [7]
Dignitatis humanae is the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom. In the context of the council's stated intention "to develop the doctrine of recent popes on the inviolable rights of the human person and the constitutional order of society", Dignitatis humanae spells out the church's support for the protection of religious liberty. It set the ground rules by which the church would relate to secular states.
Pope Pius VI was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 15 February 1775 to his death in August 1799.
Pope Pius IX was head of the Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878. His reign of 32 years is the longest of any pope in history. He was notable for convoking the First Vatican Council in 1868 and for permanently losing control of the Papal States in 1870 to the Kingdom of Italy. Thereafter, he refused to leave Vatican City, declaring himself a "prisoner in the Vatican".
In politics, integralism, integrationism or integrism is an interpretation of Catholic social teaching that argues the principle that the Catholic faith should be the basis of public law and public policy within civil society, wherever the preponderance of Catholics within that society makes this possible. Integralism is anti-pluralist, seeking the Catholic faith to be dominant in civil and religious matters. Integralists uphold the 1864 definition of Pope Pius IX in Quanta cura that the religious neutrality of the civil power cannot be embraced as an ideal situation and the doctrine of Leo XIII in Immortale Dei on the religious obligations of states. In December 1965, the Second Vatican Council approved and Pope Paul VI promulgated the document Dignitatis humanae–the Council's "Declaration on Religious Freedom"–which states that it "leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ". However, they have simultaneously declared "that the human person has a right to religious freedom," a move that some traditionalist Catholics such as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of St. Pius X, have argued is at odds with previous doctrinal pronouncements.
Quanta cura 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.
Modernism in the Catholic Church describes attempts to reconcile Catholicism with modern culture, specifically an understanding of the Bible and Catholic tradition in light of the historical-critical method and new philosophical and political developments of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Exsurge Domine is a papal bull promulgated on 15 June 1520 by Pope Leo X. It was written in response to the teachings of Martin Luther which opposed the views of the Catholic Church. The bull censured forty-one propositions abstracted from Luther's writings, and threatened him with excommunication unless he recanted within a sixty-day period commencing upon the publication of the bull in Saxony and its neighboring regions.
Pascendi Dominici gregis is a papal encyclical letter, subtitled "On the Doctrines of the Modernists", promulgated by Pope Pius X on 8 September 1907.
Mirari vos, sometimes referred to as Mirari vos arbitramur, was the fourth encyclical letter of Pope Gregory XVI and was issued in August 1832. Addressed to "All Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and Bishops of the Catholic World", it is general in its audience and scope, whereas his three earlier encyclicals had been addressed to more specific audiences in the Papal States and the Kingdom of Poland.
Quibus quantisque malis was a papal allocution of Pius IX addressed to the Consistory of Cardinals on April 20, 1849, discussing the recent political atmosphere.
Singulari Nos was an encyclical issued on June 25, 1834, by Pope Gregory XVI. Essentially a follow-up to the better-known Mirari vos of 1832, Singulari Nos focused strongly on the views of French priest Felicité Robert de Lamennais, who did not see any contradiction between Catholicism and then-modern ideals of liberalism and the separation of church and State.
Luigi Maria Bilio, C.R.S.P., was a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who, among other offices, was Secretary of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office.
Romano Amerio was a Swiss-Italian theologian and a late critic of post-Conciliar evolutions in liturgy and ecclesiology. His magnum opus is Iota Unum. It is a work dedicated to the study of the ruptures in Church teaching and tradition following the Second Vatican Council.
The Decree Against Communism was a 1949 Catholic Church document issued by the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, and approved by Pope Pius XII, which declared Catholics who professed communist doctrine to be excommunicated as apostates from the Christian faith. The decree has since been abrogated, and is no longer valid.
The theology of Pope Pius IX championed the pontiff's role as the highest teaching authority in the Church.
Jamdudum cernimus is a declaration in the form of an allocution given by Pope Pius IX on 18 March 1861. It has been cited as a source for the last and most famous statement of the Syllabus of Errors, that of the irreconcilability between Christian civilization and modern liberal civilization.
The modern history of the papacy is shaped by the two largest dispossessions of papal property in its history, stemming from the French Revolution and its spread to Europe, including Italy.
In the Roman Catholic Church, a papal allocution is a solemn, private form of address or speech employed by the Pope on certain occasions. Historically, papal allocutions were delivered only in a secret consistory of cardinals; popes since Pope Pius IX have made increasing use of allocutions, and modern allocutions may be delivered in private to any group.
Liberalism is a Sin is a controversial book written by Roman Catholic priest Félix Sardà y Salvany in 1884, which became a rallying point for conservative political movements such as Integrism and Carlism.
Quanto conficiamur moerore is an encyclical of Pope Pius IX, published on August 10, 1863, addressed to the College of Cardinals and Italian Episcopate.