After the Lateran Accord

...On this point many doubts have arisen on both sides...

...no apostate priest has lost his position...

...By article 36 of the concordat, this teaching is to be developed in the secondary schools (high schools and colleges) under the control of ecclesiastical authorities, by priests or laymen...

...But this religious training-which is still to be realized-is compulsory only for students whose parents wish it...

...Next the Osservatore Romano, which is the only paper of the Vatican City, replied to Missiroli by publishing a series of articles, all of which were under the correlative title: Date a Dio (Give to God...

...The religious rite applies to Catholics and does not affect the liberty of conscience of other people...

...others are free to have their children excused from the instruction...

...All that was remembered during the royal visit, when Italian flags crossed on the Berninian colonnade and Italian troops presented arms to the Palatine By UMBERTO GUGGIERI Since the Vatican treaties were signed, opinions regarding the effects have ranged from unrestrained optimism to a feeling very near despair...

...In other words, granted that an independent papal state works, does the concordat closely connected with it work as well...

...From the opposite side, where former Masons and atheist philosophers range themselves more or less wrapped in a Fascist toga, the fear was expressed that the Church would come to control the state and Italy be Vaticanized...

...and, given the special nature of the Italian state today, the Church and the government soon began to clash on this subject...

...only the liberty of insulting the Catholic religion-or the Hebrew or the Methodist-is to be suppressed...

...Probably many of the recent discussions were inevitable, given the greatness and the complexity of the event and the existence of a still strong anticlerical current from the old generations...

...No such censure is ever to be inflicted...

...September 9, 1870.] Now the visit to the Vatican made by the royal family from the palace of the Quirinal, which had belonged to the Popes, seals both the recognition of the Italian kingdom with the end of the "great reserve" represented by the protest and imprisonment of the Pontiff, and the character of absolute independence of the papal state as necessary for the exercise of the authority divinely entrusted to the Pontiff...

...while now many clouds lower upon the Tiber...

...For some weeks, people felt as if the conciliation had become a war...

...The title itself reveals what it aims at...

...The Church cannot, of course, accept this view if Catholicism is really to be the religion of the Italian state...

...Therefore he wanted to occupy Rome, "as a precaution," to secure "the inviolability of the Supreme Pontiff, his spiritual authority as well as the independence of the Holy See...

...Yet he has shown the ambition to continue the politics of Cavour, who, up to the eve of his death, aimed at "a peace between the Church and the state, the Papacy and the Italians," as he wrote to Father Passaglia on February 21, 1861...

...Against this the Holy See diplomatically protested, and obtained satisfaction...

...Now, since 95 percent of the citizens, even before the concordat, used to celebrate two rites for marriage, religious and civil, today the matter is practically simplified...

...Mussolini opened fire by his addresses to the Parliament on May 13 and 25...

...The author fights, with courteous phrases, all the papal views on education and organization, and humiliates Catholic doctrine and culture, chiefly the culture of the Italian clergy...

...In Gentile's system, religion means myth, that is, the infancy of spiritual activity...

...The change of the ratifications on June 6, when Mussolini went to Vatican, and the visit, on June 24, of the first Italian ambassador to the Holy See, Count De Vecchi, who assured the Pope that the government aimed to apply "with a Christian spirit and steady will the Lateran agreement," did not restore calm, because a campaign of the press against Catholic organizations embittered the feeling of Catholics...

...Then, at the philosophical congress held in Rome in May, the followers of the idealistic Gentile's views spoke of the grave peril for the intelligence in religious training...

...Nor is the liberty of religious discussion limited...

...Besides that, in the new regions annexed after the world war, religious matrimony had civil effect until 1924...

...The head of the Fascist press, Lando Ferretti, recalling on November 30 that rainy morning of February II, when the Duce went to the Lateran palace to sign the conventions with Cardinal Gasparri, wrote that then everything seemed bright...

...Thus no Jew nor Protestant shall be given Catholic instruction...

...As soon as the conventions were known, certain panegyrists proceeded to announce that a new Constantinian or Carolingian era was to dawn...

...Liberty of thought in danger I" This cry arose from some philosophical quarters...

...Some of them, with the support of certain well-known anti-clerical writers, presume to be put, as a religious body, on a ground of perfect equality with the Catholic religion...

...the Pope's rejoinder was also published, in consequence, and given wide circulation...

...Against his wish, Mussolini's speeches were published in a volume and widely distributed...

...thus his speeches were interpreted by the Holy Father...

...This of course aroused a sentiment of hostility and disquiet when confidence and forgetfulness were necessary if the conciliation were really to "pacificate the national conscience," as the King had said in Parliament on April 20...

...As to education, the former Minister of Instruction, Giovanni Gentile, introduced religious teaching into the elementary schools in 1923...

...However, nobody desired war, and from both sides the assurance was repeated: "The peace shall last...

...The debate, beginning on philosophical ground, reached the political field...

...The book likewise included a secret document relating to the first negotiations for the concordat...

...They want religion taught for what it is...

...At the same time, the Catholic press was forbidden to discuss the implications of the concordat or to reply to the attacks of their opponents...

...Since Italy is a Catholic country and the first article of her constitution proclaims Catholicism as the religion of the state, religious matrimony has been given back the legal value it had before the promulgation of the new code of January 1, 1866...

...while the policy of the Duce disenchanted some of the more ingenuous Catholics...

...Thus he gives a kind of reply to the Pope's address to a Catholic school on May 15, in which the Holy Father had pointed out again that education belongs, in the first place, to the Church and to the family, by a divine and natural right: that the state cannot and must not be uninterested in education, but that it should not "absorb, swallow up, annihilate the individual and the family, because the family comes before society and the state itself...

...There is no doubting that the Papacy and Fascismo have found themselves in opposition on fundamental matters...

...The Catholic reply was: "Religion and philosophy...

...and the bitterest opponent organ, L'Impero, for lack of readers, discontinued publication...

...He concluded this dutiful manifesto with the declaration that the Head of the Catholic Church, surrounded by the devotion of the Italian people will keep, by the shore of the Tiber, a glorious See, independent from every human sovereignty...

...But do the facts justify such a feeling...

...Protestants-who are very few, and chiefly foreigners in Italy-now enjoy a greater freedom than before...

...For him, religion was to be used as a mere stimulus of interest for speculative activity...

...Nor has any inconvenience, practically, occurred regarding to the two most discussed items of the concordat: matrimony and education...

...And this is a widespread feeling, although the greatest majority of Italians, together with the Catholic hierarchy and the civil power, still trust in "the good-will and loyal cooperation upon which," as the Sovereign Pontiff has so very truly declared, "we had to rely and we are still relying...

...It seems now as if the history of Italy had fallen again in line with its religious tradition, and Pius XI had resumed the work for the country interrupted under Pius IX, thus soldering the edges of the past and of the future...

...and in the same time it seems as if Victor Emmanuel III had tied again the link broken by his grandfather, Victor Emmanuel II...

...I think that this weak pessimism is no more justified than the lyric optimism of the past winter...

...In this way, article 34 aims at strengthening the family, but it does not implicate the suppression of the civil ceremony for those who prefer it...

...As to the negotiations leading to the Lateran conventions, he aimed to demonstrate that nothing had been given up by the state and everything by the Church...

...In the following paper it is contended that the facts do not justify either of these two attitudes...

...So the experience of these first months has been sharp and hard, and many people are doubting whether the conciliation has been a wise act...

...The reason is clear...

...The government had explained its real views and aims about the nature of the relations between the ecclesiastical and the political powers...

...Because of the European disorders-the outbreak of the Franco-German War -he wrote, he was to take the responsibility, in the face of Europe and Catholicity, of keeping order in the Peninsula and granting the security of the Holy See...

...The concordat's object was to settle them so as to avoid the undue ingerence of either upon the other's field...

...The King's visit and the hearty welcome accorded him give basis to the hope for a more realistic recognition of the imprescriptible rights of the Church...

...Sometimes there has been open conflict...

...Missiroli deals with these claims only to reject them and to conclude that the state must be the only educator, and the supreme ruler also in the fields which the Church claims for herself...

...or, misunderstanding the concordat, feared that many teachers would be dismissed through incurring an ecclesiastical censure...

...And the Holy Father replied in a very strong way, so that a period of trouble and disappointment followed and many fears and dreams were shattered...

...Lastly, in November the contrast was stressed by a former liberal newspaperman, Mario Missiroli, in his book, Date a Cesare (Give to Caesar) which was introduced with an approving article by Lando Fer-retti, designed to make it appear an official issue...

...But what was the extent of that field...

...On the other hand, not a few incidents have testified to a growing rapprochement between the Vatican and Italy...

...The day following the visit, many papers praised both the Papacy and the royal family...

...In his letter to Cardinal Gasparri (May 30) the Holy Father had emphasized Mussolini's "heretical and worse than heretical expressions touching the essence itself of the Christian religion," and vindicated the Church's right to direct the organization of Catholic Action...

...First Credaro, a former Minister of Instruction, put forth the question: "What shall we teach now to our students: religion or philosophy...

...On other occasions also the Pope had vindicated his right to control Catholic Action...

...Others, exaggerating the number and the importance of the apostate priests in public schools and offices, began to cry that many families would be ruined by their dismissal...

...of Saint Peter's...

...As Minister he had introduced the catechism into the elementary schools, but with the view that the religious instruction of the children should be resolved, overcome, dominated by the idealistic speculation of the secondary schools...

...What had happened between February and November...

...Meanwhile, Senator Salata brought out from the imperial archives of Vienna, without any critical or historical frame, some documents of Leo XIII to show that that Pope had been an enemy to the new united Italy...

...Of course Catholics do not lend themselves to such abuse of their faith...

...But while the concordat grants full freedom to this organization, some Fascist papers unchained a campaign against its existence and its independence, holding that in a Fascist regime no society may be tolerated beyond the direct jurisdiction of the state...

...Nothing of the sort has happened, though the enemies of the Church aroused a bitter discussion on these points...

...His words, stressing the power of the state with regard to the Church, sounded a surprise for those who had fancied that Catholicism and Fascism were to become one and same thing...

...We belong to a Militant Church...

...The rumor that Mussolini would also pay a visit to Pius XI has been officially denied...

...Also, the ministers of non-Catholic religions are now permitted to celebrate the marriages of their followers according to their own rites, with civil effect...

...It was eleven days before his troops seized Rome that Victor Emmanuel sent his last letter to Pius IX, by Count Ponza di San Martino, addressing him "with the affection of a son, the faith of a Catholic, the loyalty of a king, the soul of an Italian...

...A like comparison was made by the Holy Father, both in his letter of May 30 and in his speech of December 1 stating the difference between the great joy of February and the sadness of today...

...This article was written on the spot by a man in whose judgment the editors have confidence.-The Editors...

...guards in the famous Piazza...