06 July 2022

Ecclesiam a Jesu Christo - Papal Bull Adding the Carbonari to Banned Groups

I was unable to find this in English. This is a Google translation from the Vatican from the Italian version.

Pope Pius VII

13 September 1821

Bishop Pius, servant of the servants of God. In perpetual memory. 

1. The Church founded by Jesus Christ Our Savior on solid stone (and against it Christ promised that the gates of hell would never prevail) has been assaulted so often and by so many fearsome enemies, that if that divine promise did not stand in the way that it cannot fail, there would be fear that it could succumb, circumvented by force or vices or cunning. Indeed, what happened in other times is also and above all repeated in this mourning age of ours which seems to be that last time announced in the past by the Apostle: " The deceivers will come who, according to their wishes, will walk in the way of impiety"(Gd 18). In fact, no one is unaware of how many villains, in these very difficult times, have united against the Lord and against Christ his Son; they try above all (albeit with vain efforts) to overwhelm and subvert the Church itself, deceiving the faithful (Col 2: 8) with a vain and fallacious philosophy and subtracting them from the doctrine of the Church. To achieve this goal more easily, many of them organized occult conferences and clandestine sects with which they hoped in the future to more easily drag numerous individuals to be accomplices of their conspiracy and their iniquity. 

2. For some time this Holy See, having discovered such sects, raised the alarm against them with a loud and free voice and revealed their plots against religion and civil society itself. For some time he urged everyone's vigilance so that they watched themselves so that these sects would not dare to carry out their wicked purposes. However, it is a cause for regret that the commitment of this Apostolic See did not correspond to the outcome it aimed at and that those wicked men did not give up on the conspiracy undertaken, for which finally those evils that We ourselves had foreseen resulted. Indeed, those men, whose disaffection is always growing, have even dared to create new secret societies. 

3. At this point it is necessary to recall a recently born society which has spread far and wide in Italy and in other regions: although it is divided into numerous sects and although it sometimes takes on different and distinct names, due to its their variety, however, it is only one in fact in the commonality of doctrines and crimes and in the pact that was established; it is usually called the CarbonariThey simulate a singular respect and a certain extraordinary zeal for the Catholic Religion and for the person and teaching of Jesus Christ our Savior, whom they sometimes sacrilegiously dare to call Rector and great Master of their society. But these speeches, which seem softened with oil, are nothing but darts fired with more confidence by cunning men, to hurt the less cautious; those men appear in lamb's clothing but deep down they are rapacious wolves. 

4. Even if other arguments were lacking, the following sufficiently persuade that no credit should be given to their words, namely: the very severe oath by which, largely imitating the ancient Priscillanists, they promise never, under any circumstances, to reveal, to those who are not enrolled in society, anything that concerns the same society, nor to communicate to those who are in the lower grades anything that concerns the higher grades; furthermore, the secret and illegal meetings which they convene following the custom of many heretics and the co-optation of men of every religion and every sect in their society. 

5. Conjectures and arguments are therefore not necessary to judge their statements, as stated above. The books published by them (which describe the method that is usually followed in the meetings of the higher grades), their catechisms, the statutes and other very serious, authentic documents aimed at inspiring trust, and the testimonies of those who, having abandoned the society to which they previously belonged, revealed to the legitimate judges the errors and frauds, openly demonstrate that the Carbonariabove all they aim at giving full license to anyone to invent with their own ingenuity and with their own opinions a religion to profess, thus introducing towards Religion that indifference of which one can hardly imagine anything more pernicious. In profaning and contaminating the passion of Jesus Christ with some of their nefarious ceremonies; in despising the Sacraments of the Church (which they seem to replace other new ones invented by them with supreme impiety) and the Mysteries of the Catholic Religion themselves; in subverting this Apostolic See (in which the primacy of the Apostolic Chair has always resided) (Sant'Agostino, Ep . 43) they are animated by a particular hatred and meditate fatal and pernicious intentions. 

6. No less wicked (as can be seen from the same documents) are the rules of conduct that the society of the Carbonari teaches, although it brazenly prides itself on demanding from its followers that they cultivate and practice charity and every other virtue, and that they scrupulously refrain from every vice. Therefore, it shamelessly favors the most unbridled voluptuousness; it teaches that it is permissible to kill those who did not respect the oath to keep the secret, referred to above; and although Peter prince of the Apostles (1Pt 2:13) prescribes that Christians " be subject, in the name of God, to every human creature or to the King as pre-eminent or to the Heads as sent by him, etc. ", Although the Apostle Paul (Rom 3:14) orders that"every soul is subject to the highest powers ", however that society teaches that it is not a crime to foment rebellions and deprive kings and other leaders of their power, which by utmost insult it indifferently dares to call tyrants. 

7. These and others are the dogmas and precepts of this society, which gave rise to those crimes recently committed by the Carbonari , which have brought so much mourning to honest and pious people. We, therefore, who have been designated as seers of that house of Israel which is the Holy Church and who for our pastoral office must avoid that the flock of the Lord divinely entrusted to Us suffer any damage, think that in such a serious contingency we cannot refrain from preventing the criminal attempts of these men. We are also moved by the example of Clement XII and Benedict XIV of happy memory, Our Predecessors: the first, on April 28, 1738, with the Constitution " In eminenti ", and the second, on May 18, 1751, with the Constitution " ProvidasThey condemned and prohibited the societies of the Freemasons, that is, of the Francs Maçons , or called by any other name, according to the variety of regions and languages; it must be assumed that this society of the Carbonari is perhaps an offshoot, or certainly an imitation of these societies.

And although with two edicts promulgated by our Secretariat of State we have already severely proscribed this society, however, following the aforementioned Our Predecessors, we intend to decree, in an even more solemn way, serious penalties against this society, above all because the Carbonari wrongly claim not to be included in the two Constitutions of Clement XII and Benedict XIV nor to be subject to the sentences and sanctions provided for therein. 

8. Having therefore consulted a chosen Congregation of Our Venerable Brothers Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, with their council and also by motu proprio , by certain doctrine and by our deliberate deliberation, in the fullness of apostolic authority we have established and decreed to condemn and to prohibit the aforementioned society of the Carbonari, or with any other name called, its meetings, assemblies, conferences, aggregations, conventicles, as well as with this Our act we condemn and prohibit it. 

9. Therefore to each and every one of the faithful of Christ of any state, degree, condition, order, dignity and pre-eminence, both lay and clerical, both secular and regular, also worthy of specific, individual and explicit mention, we order rigorously and by virtue of the holy obedience that no one, under any pretext or sought-after reason, dares or claims to found, spread or promote, and in his house or residence or elsewhere to welcome and hide the aforementioned Carbonari society, or otherwise called, as well as to register or join it or to intervene at any level of it or to offer the faculty and opportunity that it is convened somewhere or to give something to it or in any other way to give advice, clear or hidden help or favor, direct or indirect, for itself or for others; and also to exhort, induce, provoke or persuade others to join, join or intervene in this company or in any degree of it or to benefit or favor it in any case. The faithful must absolutely abstain from society itself, from its meetings, reunions, aggregations or conventicles under penalty of excommunication in which all the aforementioned offenders immediately incur, without any other declaration; no one can be absolved from the excommunication except by us or by the Roman Pontiffpro tempore, unless he is on the verge of death. 

10. Furthermore, we prescribe to everyone, under the same penalty of excommunication, reserved to Us and to the Roman Pontiffs Our Successors, the obligation to report to the Bishops, or to other competent persons, all those who know that they have joined this society or who have joined stained with any of the crimes mentioned above. 

11. Finally, in order to more effectively remove any danger of error, we condemn and proscribe all the so-called catechisms and books of the Carbonari , where they describe what is customary to do in their meetings; likewise their statutes, codices and all the books written in their defense, both printed and manuscript. To all the faithful, under the same penalty of a major excommunication equally reserved, we prohibit the aforementioned books, or the reading or preservation of any of them; and we order that those books be delivered without exception to the local Ordinaries or to others who have the right to receive them. 

12. We also want the same faith that would be granted to the original letter if it were presented or shown to the transitions, even printed ones, of this letter, signed by the hand of some public notary and bearing the seal of a person invested with ecclesiastical dignity. . 

13. Therefore it is not lawful for anyone to snatch or contradict this text of Our declaration, condemnation, order, prohibition and interdict with rash arrogance. If anyone dared to try this, he should know that he will incur the indignation of Almighty God and of his blessed Apostles Peter and Paul. 

Given in Rome, at Santa Maria Maggiore, in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 1821, on 13 September, in the twenty-second year of Our Pontificate.

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