Mirari vos

Mirari vos ( in German: " You wonder ") is an encyclical by Pope Gregory XVI, it was released on August 15 in 1832 and is subtitled. " About the liberalism and religious indifferentism ." With this encyclical he reaffirmed a firm rejection of any religion and freedom of conscience, provided that they had to be seen as encroachment of politics on the religious sphere at that time.

Liberal Catholicism and indifferentism

In his encyclical, the first was directed against the " liberal Catholicism " by the French theologian and politician Félicité de Lamennais and the new Belgian Constitution.

The requirement of freedom of conscience referred to the Pope, the Habsburg monarchy related parties, madness and pestilential error, as did he laments the indifference in matters of faith, " the so-called indifference ". With the hard, sometimes harsh condemnation of all modern ideas this encyclical, the precursor for the encyclical of his successor Pius IX appears. " Quanta cura " to be with the " Syllabus ".

To this end, Gregory writes:

" We now come to another most momentous cause of evils, of which the Church is currently afflicted to Our grief, namely, the indifference or that wrong opinion ... you can not acquire eternal salvation with any creed, when thinking of the way of life of the standard of rights and moral good -aligned. And ... of this most heinous source of indifferentism flows that absurd and erroneous idea or rather the illusion that each one must be awarded and ensure the freedom of conscience. "

Church reforms and freedom of conscience

The desire for reform within the church, he refuses on principle:

"It is completely absurd and to say a libel in the highest degree, the church in need of a renovation ... ... as if one could believe the church would be subject to error, ignorance or any other human imperfection. "

Freedom of conscience he calls an " erroneous opinion ", " madness " and " disease -like error". He condemns the freedom movement as a " madness of intellectual freedom " and denounces the " boundless thought and freedom of speech " and the "renewal addiction" to. All these trials were contrary to the requirements of God and the Church.

It is now generally recognized in Catholicism, that an order is necessary for the coexistence of people in the state, based upon the natural law. However, the Catholic Church is at the core of their competence remains at a priority of the church's ministry before politics and society.