profess and embrace whatever religion he shall deem true.

It has not the right to enact that the ecclesiastical power
shall require the permission of the civil power in order to
the exercise of its authority.

Then in the same Syllabus the rights and powers of the Church are
affirmed in substance:

She has the right to require the state not to leave every
man free to profess his own religion.

She has the right to exercise her power without the
permission or consent of the state.

She has the right of perpetuating the union of church and
state.

She has the right to require that the Catholic religion
shall be the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of
all others.

She has the right to prevent the state from granting the
public exercise of their own worship to persons immigrating
from it.

She has the power of requiring the state not to permit free
expression of opinion.

You see, the Holy Office is unrepentant and unchastened. You, who
think that liberty of conscience is the basis of civilization, ought
at least to know what the Catholic Church has to say about the matter.
Here is Mgr. Segur, in his "Plain Talk About Protestantism of Today",
a book published in Boston and extensively circulated by American
Catholics:

Freedom of thought is the soul of Protestantism; it is
likewise the soul of modern rationalism and philosophy. It
is one of those impossibilities which only the levity of a
superficial reason can regard as admissable. But a sound
mind, that does not feed on empty words, looks upon this
freedom of thought only as simply absurd, and, what is more,
as sinful.

You take the liberty of thinking, nevertheless; you feel safe because
the Law will protect you. But do you imagine that this "Law" applies
to your Catholic neighbors? Do you imagine that they are bound by the
restraints that bind #you#? Here is Pope Leo XIII, in his Encyclical
of 1890--and please remember that Leo XIII was the #beau ideal# of our
capitalist statesmen and editors, as wise and kind and gentle-souled a
pope as ever roasted a heretic. He says:

If the laws of the state are openly at variance with the
laws of God--if they inflict injury upon the Church--or set
at naught the authority of Jesus Christ which is vested in
the Supreme Pontiff, then indeed it becomes a duty t