NON EXPEDIT. - It is the formula that forbade Italian Catholics to participate in political life, following the spoliations of territories suffered by the Holy See, which led to the destruction of the temporal power.
After the military occupation of the Marches and Umbria, pontifical lands, 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: Libera Chiesa in libero Stato, he elaborated the famous speech of 25 March 1861 to the Chamber of Turin, concluding that in any case, by agreement or without, Italy would reach Rome and would make it its capital, guaranteeing the Pope absolute independence.
After Cavour's death, the "Roman Question," far from moving toward a solution, appeared ever more arduous and complicated. To set Catholics on a common line consistent with inescapable norms, Fr. Giacomo Margotti (v.), writer and polemicist, founded in 1862 in Turin the newspaper L'Unità cattolica and was the first who, with his formula: Né eletti né elettori, in a long series of articles, launched and upheld the maxim of a dutiful abstention of Italian Catholics from political life in the new situation that was being created for the Pope and the Church.
Such a formula, at first, could have the value only of a personal opinion and advice; but with the taking of Rome in 1870 it penetrated the conscience of many and found followers especially in the organizations of Catholic Action. In that same year some deputies, first among them Baron Vito d'Ondes Reggio (v.) and Marquis Ottavio di Canossa, renounced their parliamentary mandate. One may therefore trace back virtually to that epoch, in potency if not in act, the n. e. that sanctioned the principle affirmed by Fr. Margotti. The first official declaration on the matter was a decree of the Sacred Penitentiary of 10 Sept. 1874; discussions on its interpretation followed, since it seemed to not a few that n. e. meant inopportuneness, but not an absolute prohibition; there were even attempts to push Catholics to the polls on the eve of political elections, and among other things some observed that the Pope had never directly pronounced on the matter. Pius IX himself then intervened, who with a brief of 29 Jan. 1877 to the Superior Council of Catholic Youth, reproved the conduct of those who pushed Catholics to the political polls, while the Holy See had not yet defined whether it was lawful or not, and under what conditions, to take part in them. The grave declaration cut short the activity of the interventionist current, but not the discussions about the opportuneness of acting on the parliamentary terrain in opposition to sectarian influences and in the very interest of the Holy See and of Catholics.
Only on 30 June 1888 did a decree of the Congregation of the Holy Office, approved by Leo XIII, rule that, for reasons of the highest order, the n. e. included a true and proper prohibition; thus abstention was transformed into a command. Nevertheless, a new phase soon began in the orientation of many Catholics, out of the conviction that the evolution of Italian public life would have made inevitable, at a certain moment, given the overbearing conduct of the sects and the threat of subversive currents, the intervention of Catholics. A new formula then emerged: preparation in abstention, which aimed to replace the earlier né eletti né elettori of Fr. Margotti; and its author and for many years tenacious champion was Filippo Meda (v.), with speeches and articles in newspapers and reviews. He conceived Catholic Action (v.) under the twofold aspect of religious and social-political; religious insofar as it is directed to the good of souls under the dependence of the authority of the Church; and social-political insofar as, acting within civil society, it proposes, through the exercise of civil rights, to influence public institutions and to imprint them with the religious idea. The cessation of the n. e. would have come about either through express revocation by the Pope, or through natural lapse following the change in political-religious conditions.
The death of Leo XIII and the ascent of Pius X to the pontifical throne determined new directives, and expectation among Catholics was very keen in view of the general political elections, called for Nov. 1904. The abstention of Catholics ceased in an unforeseen manner. Pius X confirmed the protests of his predecessors, and in principle the prohibition on Catholics taking part, as such, in political life, but he directly granted certain derogations in cases reported by the bishops. This was the prelude to what he then disposed with the encyclical Il fermo proposito of 11 June 1905. He did not revoke the 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, authorized to grant 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, leaving the "Roman Question" unprejudiced in the relations between the Holy See and the Italian State, Pius X provided for the high moral interests of the nation. After more than thirty years, there were again Catholic voters and, if not Catholic deputies, Catholics as deputies, putting an end to an uncertainty that disturbed consciences in the conflict between Catholic discipline and well-understood love of country. It was not a question, nor could it be, of a political party; but the substance was achieved and a great step had been taken on the road of rapprochement. Pius X, not deviating from this line, prepared easy ground for his successor Benedict XV, who in 1919, by allowing all Catholics to enter the new Popular Party (v.), implicitly revoked the n. e.