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among the people; and how ought he to be treated? We invoke to reply to it, the authority of the Holy See, against which it is not permissable for any one to reply and to make an attack.
For about three years, the Holy Congregation of the Propaganda, charged with Apostolic superintendence over this country, has been informed that certain papers allowed themselves to publish insults to the ecclesiastical authorities. The Prefect of this Holy congregation was constrained to write to the Bishops of this Province to impress upon them the necessity of doing all in their power to cause an end to be put to these unhappy discussions which could only secure the triumph of Protestants. His Eminence recommended in his letter, the Bishops to compel, if it were necessary, those who were guilty in this particular, to submit to this injunction by forbidding the faithful to read their papers. "Curent (Episcopi) ne hujusmodi contentiones per ephemerides et libellos a catholicis exerceantur, utque eos qui in hoc deliquerent coercere, et si opus fuerit earumdem edhemeridum lectionem fidelibus prohibere non omittant." (Rescript of 23rd March, 1873.)
We publish herewith this rule of conduct and we order all those who have charge of souls to exactly conform themselves to it. By refusing admission to the Sacrament to all those who read or efficaciously encourage the newspapers in which they take to task or cover with insults, the shepherds of souls, because they oppose the dissemination of erroneous principles, reproved by the Sovereign Pontiff or by the early Fathers, charged by Jesus Christ to teach all people those holy doctrines which are placed in the bosom of the Church. Especially must the sacraments be refused to those editors who write such insults, and to those who employ them to edit the newspapers of which they are proprietors.
The foregoing extracts point with unfortunately too direct an aim at the absolute subjugation of the Liberal Catholics, under threats for disobedience which one is amazed to see fulminated in the nineteenth century. It would appear that unless complete abasement of mind and body,—absolute
