The Position of the Pope

23. No; Italy's real enemies must be sought elsewhere; they must be sought amongst the men who, urged on by the spirit of irreligion and having no hearts to feel for the evils and dangers which menace their country, reject every real and effective solution of present difficulties, and endeavour by guilty designs to protract and increase their bitterness. It is to such men as these, and to no others, that the rigorous measures aimed at useful Catholic associations should be applied-measures which afflict Us profoundly for a higher reason that regards not only the Catholics of Italy, but those of the whole world. These measures place in fuller light the painful, precarious, and intolerable position to which We have been reduced. If certain events, in which Catholics had no part, have been sufficient to bring about the suppression of thousands of guileless charitable works, in spite of the guarantees they possessed in the fundamental laws of the State, every sensible and fair-minded man will understand what is the value of the assurances given by the public authorities for the liberty and independence of our Apostolic ministry. To what a point is Our liberty reduced when, after having been deprived of the greatest part of the ancient moral and material resources with which Christian ages had enriched the Apostolic See and the Church in Italy, We are now even deprived of those means of religious and social action which Our solicitude and the admirable zeal of the Bishops, clergy, and people had got together for the defence of religion, and for the good of the Italian people? What is this pretended liberty when another occasion, any incident whatsoever, might serve as a pretext for going still farther along the road of arbitrary violence, and for inflicting fresh and deeper wounds on the Church and on religion?