Like Locke, the
author thinks that atheism is a legitimate case for such coercion.
The new States which Napoleon set up in Italy exhibited toleration in
various degrees, but real liberty was first introduced in Piedmont by
Cavour (1848), a measure which prepared the way for the full liberty
which was one of the first-fruits of the foundation of the Italian
kingdom in 1870. The union of Italy, with all that it meant, is the most
signal and dramatic act in the triumph of the ideas of the modern State
over the traditional principles of the Christian Church. Rome, which
preserved those principles most faithfully, has offered a steadfast, we
may say a heroic, resistance to the liberal ideas which swept Europe in
the nineteenth century. The guides of her policy grasped thoroughly the
danger which liberal thought meant for an institution which, founded in
a remote past, claimed to be unchangeable and never out of date. Gregory
XVI issued a solemn protest maintaining authority against freedom, the
mediaeval against the modern ideal, in an Encyclical Letter (1832),
which was intended as a rebuke to some young French Catholics (Lamennais
and his friends) who had conceived the promising idea of transforming
the Church by the Liberal spirit
[124] of the day. The Pope denounces "the absurd and erroneous maxim, or
rather insanity, that liberty of conscience should be procured and
guaranteed to every one.
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