NON EXPEDIT. — This is the formula that prohibited Italian Catholics from participating in political life, following the seizure of territories suffered by the Holy See, which led to the destruction of its temporal power.
After the military occupation of the Marches and Umbria, papal territories, and the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, Cavour (v.) aimed above all to make Rome the capital of the new Kingdom, hoping to overcome by diplomatic means the international difficulties of the “Roman Question” and those posed by the resistance of the Holy See, supported by the majority of Catholics. On the formula dear to him, A Free Church in a Free State, he based his famous speech of 25 March 1861 to the Chamber of Turin, concluding that, by whatever means, through agreements or without them, Italy would reach Rome and make it its capital, guaranteeing the Pope absolute independence.
After Cavour’s death, the “Roman Question,” far from moving toward a solution, appeared increasingly arduous and complicated. To set Catholics upon a common line consistent with binding norms, Fr. Margotti (v.), writer and polemicist, founded the newspaper L'Unità cattolica in Turin in 1862 and was the first, with his formula Neither elected nor electors, to launch and support, in a long series of articles, the principle that Italian Catholics had a duty to abstain from political life in the new situation being created for the Pope and the Church.
Only on 30 June 1888 did a decree of the Congregation of the Holy Office, approved by Leo XIII, declare that, for reasons of the highest order, n. e. included a genuine prohibition; abstention thus became a command. A new phase soon began, however, in the outlook of many Catholics, who were convinced that the evolution of Italian public life would at a certain point make Catholic intervention inevitable, owing to the predominance of sectarian forces and the threat of subversive movements. A new formula then emerged: preparation through abstention, which aimed to replace Fr. Margotti’s original neither elected nor electors; its author and for many years its tenacious advocate was Filippo Meda (v.), through speeches and articles in newspapers and journals. Action (v.) under a dual religious and socio-political aspect: religious insofar as it was directed toward the good of souls under the authority of the Church; and socio-political insofar as, acting within civil society, it sought, through the exercise of civil rights, to influence public institutions and imbue them with the religious idea. The cessation of n. e. would have occurred either through its express revocation by the Pope or through its natural lapse following a change in political and religious conditions.
The death of Leo XIII and the accession of Pius X to the papal throne brought new directives, and expectations among Catholics were intense in view of the general political elections called for November 1904. Catholic abstention came to an unexpected end. Pius X confirmed the protests of his predecessors, and in principle the prohibition against Catholics taking part, as such, in political life, but he directly granted certain exceptions in cases reported by the bishops. This was the prelude to what he subsequently ordered in the encyclical Il fermo proposito of 11 June 1905. He did not revoke n. e., but opened the way to political life for Catholics in special circumstances and by way of dispensation, when their participation was recognized by the bishops, who were authorized to permit it as strictly necessary for the good of souls and for the supreme interests of the Church and of society, which had to be saved at all costs. Thus, while leaving the “Roman Question” between the Holy See and the Italian State unresolved, Pius X attended to the nation’s highest moral interests. After more than thirty years, there were once again Catholic electors and, if not Catholic deputies, deputies who were Catholic, bringing to an end an uncertainty that troubled consciences amid the conflict between Catholic discipline and properly understood patriotism. This was not, nor could it have been, a political party; but the substance had been achieved, and a great step had been taken toward rapprochement. Pius X, without departing from this line, prepared favorable ground for his successor Benedict XV, who in 1919, by allowing all Catholics to enter the new Popular Party (v.), implicitly revoked n. e.