Enciclopedia Cattolica

MIRARI VOS

Volume VIII · p. 651 · 1952

English translation · Testo originale italiano

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

«MIRARI VOS». — Opening phrase of the encyclical issued by Gregory XVI on 15 Aug. 1832, against the errors of Lamennais (v.).

After an opening on the evils of the present age, the Pope recalls his mission as guardian and interpreter of the faith, and, since the principles of the new ideas were spreading on all sides, he examines and refutes the theory of religious indifferentism and the consequent liberalism, exemplified in the proclaimed freedoms of conscience and of the press and in the juridical system of separation between Church and State. The document closes with an appeal for loyal submission to constituted authority.

Throughout the encyclical there run juridical-dogmatic motifs that were keenly felt throughout the century and that reappeared, clarified and refined, in the Syllabus (v.) of Pius IX.

BIBL.: A. M. Bernasconi, Acta Gregorii XVI, I, Rome 1901, pp. 169 ff. (text of the encyclical); I. Bellamy, La théologie catholique aux XIXe siècle, Paris 1904, pp. 26; J. Schmidlin, Histoire des papes de l’époque contemporaine, I, II, French trans. by L. Cristiani, Lyons 1940, pp. 395–97; E. Hocedez, Histoire de la théologie aux XIXe siècle, I, Paris-Brussels 1950, pp. 121–23 and passim; J. Lelion, La crise révolutionnaire, in A. Fliche-V. MARTINO G, Histoire de l’Église, XX, Paris 1949, pp. 478–81; H. Haag, Les origines du catholicisme libéral en Belgique (1789–1839), Louvain 1950, pp. 163–96.