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important, though assuredly not the easier to handle, through present circumstances.
We hasten to say and to proclaim in this place that our celebration of this tenth anniversary must be a hymn of the liveliest thanksgiving, our Magnificat, our Nuno Ialanittis, our and your Te Deum, to that Divine goodness which, from the time of our first encyclical, recalled to our memory and our pen those beautiful words : Ego cogito cogitationis pacts et 7101E afflictionee; this made us anticipate in our heart that hour which Divine Providence was soon to cause to strike and about which it was our duty to see that it would not be struck in vain.
THANKS TO ITALY It is hardly necessary to say, and yet we say it. aloud, that, after God, our recognition and our thanks are due to those very eminent persons—we mean our noble Sovereign and his incomparable Minister—to whom is due the fact that this so important and beneficial work has been crowned with a happy end and a great success. We must mention also those eminent persons— Cardinal Gaspard and the Marquis Francesco Pacelli—who helped us with an heroic assiduity in their work, a fact which may have hastened their death, and it is for this reason that we recall with gratitude their honour and their names.
But the duty of acknowledging our recognition towards God and towards men having been accomplished, and having given our cordial congratulations to the whale of that Italy which Is so particularly dear to us among the many other dear parts of our great Catholic family, we are obliged unhappily to state—because of our apostolic duty and on behalf of sincere truth, as well as because of the reverence paid to us because of our age—that this long expected anntversary cannot bring us that serene joy to which alone we would have wished to have made allusion, but rather grave and veritable preoccupations and bitter sorrows.
ATTACH ON CATHOLIC ACTION They are bitter sorrows, truly, and further veritable and manifold vexations —we do not say that they are general— hut certainly they are very numerous and taking place in many localities against that Catholic Action which, as is well known, is the apple of our eye, and—it must also be recognised and admitted—by the violation of varioue offices of Catholic Action and of its archives.
Catholic Action ha S no Concern with politics and is not a matter for rivalry—a thing for which we have no desire—but solely purposes to make good Christians, living their Christianity, and by that very token, elements of the first importance for the public good, especially in a Catholic country like Italy, as the facts have shown.
When we observe the fervour in this regard of the less important circles, it appears only too clearly that even though Catholic Action was definitely mentioned in our Pact of Conciliation, gestures of laxity and of encouragement have amply (though secretly) come from high quarters, for the vexations, indeed, continue in different places from one end to the other of the peninsula, and these are not only unimportant places.
CARDINAL GUILTY OF INTEGRITY
Yesterday we were notified about this in Venice, Turin, Bergamo, to-day it is Milan, and precisely the person of its Cardinal-Archbishop, "guilty" of a speech and teaching which exactly answer to his episcopal duties and of which we cannot but approve.
And here it is ourselves who are reminding everybody that only what is Christian is truly and fully human. That which is anti-Christian, let us also recall, is inhuman, whether it is a question of the dignity of the human race In general or of the dignity, Ieeedom and integrity of the individual for which (save for necessary co-ordinations and co-operations) society is destined (as is also destined the very work of God Creator and Saviour, to whom each man must say: Deus Meus es tu and Dilexit me et tradidit somet(psum pro me). The offence, the wound struck at our Concordat and precisely in that which concerns Holy Matrimony—and for every Catholic it is enough to say that —has not only caused the heart of the old Father bitter griefs because of the evil treatment meted out towards his so well-loved Catholic Action, but veritable and grave preocupations to the Head of Catholicism and the Guardian of morality and truth.
NO NEED FOR DISCUSSION
We have no need to add further words to underline how the wound has gone straight and most painfully to our heart. We know that it has been asserted that the Concordat has not been broken, but rather that it has remained intact. We are far from wishing to enter into a discussion of this kind. We believe, on the contrary, that if, in the case of the observation or non-observation of every bi-lateral pact, its interpretation cannot be usurped by one of the parties alone, this is even truer in the case of an interpretation which frees one BO resolutely from all engagements to it.
MEMORY OF LEO XIII
We have another observation to make: it is a reminder of the great and glorious memory of Leo KUL
When thinking again of the recent apotheosis prepared in Rome itself for a cross which is the enemy of the Cross of Christ, of that blow struck at the Concordat and of all the other things of which we have spoken to you, it did not seem to us too much to hope for better things if only because of our white hairs. On the contrary, they have wanted in brutal fashion to go even further (Leo XIII, P.M. Acta 15, p. 269), and this reminder we make both to honour the truly honourable memory of that great Pontiff and to remind ourselves of that spirit of magnificent pardon and to imitate as we do with all our heart, that most noble example, while praying God that He will deign to illuminate intellects and move hearts in the senses of truth and justice which Etre the only true and solid basis of the well-being of persons and peoples, as is written in Holy Writ: Miseros facit populos peccatum.
We have offered our life, now an old one, for the peace and prosperity of peoples: we offer it again that inner peace, the peace of souls and consciences may remain intact, as well as the flourishing prosperity of that Italy which amidst all peoples is so dear to us, just as His own country was so dear to Jesus who gave Himself to His passion and death for the human race.
That is our Christmas vow and wish and it is with Him that we bless you again, both you and all whom you have in your hearts and thoughts.