Pope Pius IX and Religious Freedom

Abstract

The liberal outcry occasioned by the publication of the Syllabus of Errors in 1864 concerned in large part the apparent condemnation by Pius IX of religious liberty and freedom of conscience. Lord John Russell quoted practice in Mexico to show that the Pope meant that Roman Catholicism should be maintained to the exclusion of every other form of worship, while the Saturday Review argued that Pius had defended the duty of the Church and the State to persecute those who worked against Roman Catholicism. The main problem for these and other critics was constituted by articles 24, 77 and 79 of the Syllabus: how could these be interpreted except as condemning religious toleration and liberty of speech? A few years later, Gladstone, in attacking the Vatican decrees on the Church, argued that the Syllabus had not only denied the principle of toleration but had also positively favoured persecution, and referred to article 78.