ies gave it an
unfavorable reception. Many deplored it as likely to widen the breach
between the Church and modern society. The Italian press regarded it as
determining a war, without truce or armistice, between the papacy and
modern civilization. Even in Spain there were journals that regretted
"the obstinacy and blindness of the court of Rome, in branding and
condemning modern civilization."

It denounces that "most pernicious and insane opinion, that liberty of
conscience and of worship is the right of every man, and that this right
ought, in every well-governed state, to be proclaimed and asserted by
law; and that the will of the people, manifested by public opinion (as
it is called), or by other means, constitutes a supreme law, independent
of all divine and human rights." It denies the right of parents to
educate their children outside the Catholic Church. It denounces "the
impudence" of those who presume to subordinate the authority of the
Church and of the Apostolic See, "conferred upon it by Christ our Lord,
to the judgment of the civil authority." His Holiness commends, to
the venerable brothers to whom the Encyclical is addressed, incessant
prayer, and, "in order that God may accede the more easily to our and
your prayers, let us employ in all confidence, as our mediatrix with
him, the Virgin Mary, mother of God, who sits as a queen upon the
right hand of her only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in a golden
vestment, clothed around with various adornments. There is nothing she
cannot obtain from him."

CONVOCATION OF THE COUNCIL. Plainly, the principle now avowed by the
papacy must bring it into collision even with governments which had
heretofore maintained amicable relations with it. Great dissatisfaction
was manifested by Russia, and the incidents that ensued drew forth from
his Holiness an allocution (November, 1866) condemnatory of the course
of that government. To this, Russia replied, by declaring the Concordat
of 1867 abrogated.

Undeterred by the result of the battle of Sadowa (July, 1866), though
it was plain that the political condition of Europe was now profoundly
affected, and especially the relations of the papacy, the pope delivered
an allocution (June 27, 1867), confirming the Encyclical and Syllabus.
He announced his intention of convoking an Oecumenical Council.

Accordingly, as we have already mentioned, in the following year (June
29, 1868), a bull was issued convoking that Counci