Mirari vos
Mirari vos (in German: "You wonder") is an encyclical by Pope Gregory XVI. , it was published on August 15, 1832 and is subtitled: "On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism ". With this encyclical he affirmed a resolute rejection of any freedom of religion and conscience, insofar as this had to be understood at the time as an encroachment of politics on the religious sphere.
Liberal Catholicism and Indifferentism
His encyclical was initially directed against the "liberal Catholicism " of the French theologian and politician Félicité de Lamennais and the new Belgian constitution.
The Pope, who is close to the Habsburg monarchy, describes the demand for freedom of conscience as madness and pestilential error, and also complains about indifference in questions of faith, so-called "indifferentism". With the hard, sometimes harsh condemnation of all modern ideas, this encyclical appears to be the preliminary stage for the encyclical of his successor Pius IX. To be “ quanta cura ” with the “ syllabus ”.
Gregor writes about this:
“We now come to another cause of evils with the greatest consequences, from which the Church is currently afflicted to Our sorrow, namely indifferentism or that wrong opinion ... one can acquire eternal salvation with any creed, if one lives according to the norm to do what is right and morally good. ... And from this most hideous source of indifferentism flows that absurd and erroneous view or rather the delusion that everyone must be granted freedom of conscience and guaranteed. "
Church reforms and freedom of conscience
The reform wishes he leans inside the Church basically from:
"It is utterly absurd and utterly slanderous to say that the Church is in need of ... renewal ... as if one could believe the Church is subject to error, ignorance, or some other human imperfection."
He calls freedom of conscience an "erroneous opinion", "madness" and "epidemic error". He condemns the freedom movement as a “madness of intellectual freedom” and denounces the “unlimited freedom of thought and speech” and the “addiction to renewal”. All these errors would be contrary to the demands of God and the Church .
Today it is generally recognized in Catholicism that an order based on natural law is necessary for people to live together in the state . However, at the core of its competence , the Catholic Church continues to insist that the ecclesiastical office take precedence over politics and society.
See also
Web links
- Text of the encyclical (German)
- Lettres apostoliques de Pie IX, Grégoire XVI, Pie VII, encycliques, brefs, etc.: texte latin avec la traduction française , Mirari vos can be found on pp. 200–221 of the book (original text in Latin and translation into French)
- Recueil des allocutions consistoriales, encycliques et autres lettres apostoliques citées dans l'encyclique et le Syllabus du 8 décembre 1864 , Mirari vos is on pp. 154–171 of the book (original text in Latin and translation into French)
- Text of the encyclical
