Editorial

Extract

As we go to press the Daily Mail publishes an extract from an allocution delivered by His Holiness Pope Pius XI at a secret Consistory held on Thursday, December 18th, 1924. The Pope is reported to have said, inter alia, ‘Certainly nobody has thought that we, by our relief of the Russian people, have wished in any way to favour a system of government which we are so far from approving. Indeed, we feel it is our duty, in the name of the Redeemer, to warn and exhort all men, especially the heads of governments, all who love peace and public welfare, all who believe in the sanctity of family and in human dignity, to make a unanimous effort to ward off from themselves and their fellow-citizens the most grave dangers and certain injuries coming from Socialism and Communism.’ The press comment on this is that ‘Pope Pius XI has definitely entered the lists against Socialism and Communism in general and against the Soviet Government in particular, uttering the severest condemnation of a foreign government or of a political movement ever made by any Pope in recent years.’

It is evident from the startling headlines which appear over the Holy Father’s words, and the sentence, ‘definitely entered the lists against Socialism and Communism,’ that the Daily Mail was in some doubt until the present as to the attitude of the Church towards the vital questions of Socialism and Communism, and welcomes the statement of the Pope as an indication of the mind of the Church in these problems. But surely, since Leo XIII gave to the world his Encyclical Rerum Novarum, so long ago as 1891, there could be no doubt about the policy of the Church in these important questions.