6. The Solution

1. With regard to the first condition, it appears to us that the answer must be negative, in view of the persuasive force which metaphysics and morals have when they are concretized in a regime, a cul­ture, and an environment.

The doctrinal mission of the Church consists not only in teaching the truth but also in condemning error. No teaching of the truth is sufficient unless it includes the enunciation and refutation of the objections which may be brought against that truth. As Pius XII said, "The Church, ever overflowing with charity and kindness toward those who go astray,but faithful to the word of her Divine Founder, who said: 'He that is not with me is against me' (Matt. 12:30) could not fail in her duty of denouncing error and unmasking the sowers of lies. . ." (Christmat

Radio Message of 1947, "Discorsi e Radiomessagi,” Vol. IX, p.393). Pius XI expressed the same thought

as follows: "The first gift of love of the priest to his milieu, and which is incumbent upon him in the most evident manner, is the gift of serving truth, the whole truth, and to unmask and refute error underall the forms, masks, and disguises in which it is presented." (Encyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge" of March 14, 1937. AAS, Vol. XXIX, p. 1 , 63). The false maxim that teaching the truth does not require at­tacking or refuting error is of the essence of religious liberalism. There is no adequate Christian formation without apologetics. It is particularly important to note this, since the majority of men tend to accept as normal the political and social regime under which they are born and live and since the regime as a consequence of this fact exerts a profound influ­ence upon the development of their souls.

In order to measure the power of this formative action in its full extension, let us examine it in its “reason for being" and in its manner of action.

Every political, economic, and social regime is based in the final analysis upon a metaphysics and a morality. The institutions, laws, culture, and cus­toms of which a particular regime is formed, as well as those which are correlated with it, reflect in prac­tice the principles of this metaphysics and this mor­ality.

A regime by the very fact of its existence, by the natural prestige of the constituted authorities, as well as by the enormous force of environment and habit, leads the population to accept as good, normal and even indisputable, the existing culture and tem­poral order, which are consequences of the dominant metaphysical and moral principles. And, by accept­ing all of this, the spirit of the people ends up by go­ing farther, letting itself be permeated, as by osmosis, by those same principles, habitually perceived in a vague, subconscious, but very vivid way by the ma­jority of the people.

Accordingly, it is easy to see that the temporal order exerts a profound formative or destructive in­fluence over the souls of peoples and individuals.

There are epochs in which the temporal order is based upon contradictory principles coexisting be­cause of one kind of skepticism or another; however, whatever the kind of skepticism may be, it almost always has shades of pragmatism. This pragmatic skepticism generally passes on to the mentality of the multitudes.

In other epochs, the metaphysical and moral principles that serve as the soul of the temporal or­der are coherent and monolithic ‑ in truth and good­ness as in the Europe of the XIII Century, or in error and evil as in the Russia or the China of our day.

These principles can profoundly mark the peo­ples who live in a temporal society inspired by them.

To live in an order of things coherent in error and evil is already of itself a tremendous invitation to apostasy.

The Communist State, sectarian and committed to an official philosophy, carries out the doctrinal impregnation of the masses with intransigence, am­plitude, and method. And this is complemented by an untiring and explicit indoctrination repeated at every opportunity.

The whole course of history provides no exam­ple of pressure more complete in its doctrinal con­tent, more subtle and multiform in its methods, more brutal in its moments of violent action than that exercised by the Communist regimes over the peoples who are under their yoke.

In a Communist State, the regime is so totally anti‑Christian that there is no way to avoid its in­fluence except by instructing the faithful about the evils that it contains.

In the face of such an adversary, even more than in the face of any other, the Church cannot, then, accept a freedom which implies the sincere and ef­fective renunciation of the frank and efficient ex­ercise of her apologetic function.