Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/467



 "Doctor and Master Don José Maria de Jesus Diez y Sollano, Bishop of Leon by the Grace of God, to our beloved Diocesans, Health and Peace in our Lord Jesus Christ: 

"Following the illustrious example of our Most Holy Father, Pius IX., who, full of sacerdotal firmness, in the midst of the most cruel enmities against the Church, incessantly raises his pontifical voice to admonish the faithful on each occasion as to the duties that are incumbent on them, and explicitly declares all the Catholic doctrines which it is their duty to follow, intimating what censures the Church would pass on any act contrary to said doctrines, according to the canons that were lately published in his allocution of the 25th of the past July; we, in the fulfillment of our episcopal duty, do not wish to criminate ourselves before God (before whose tribunal we have all to appear) by not raising our voice on the present occasion, when our faithful ones, seduced by the dread of humanity, protect a constitution and laws which involve many underhand heresies condemned by the Holy Church, and others nominally condemned in the Encyclia Quanta y Syllabus of the same most high pontiff, Pius IX.

"We declare: That the protest which newly exists, and which is added today, the 25th of September, to the Constitution of 1857 by decree of the General Congress is unlawful, and those who protect it simply commit a mortal sin, and the crime of heresy, and those who comply with the feast of its externals will require absolution from the Holy Father.

"We equally declare: That for the same reason the Mexican Episcopate declared that he could not absolve those who had taken the oath of allegiance to the Laws of Reform, without previous retractation from the scandal and from the heretical propositions which are involved in this protest, and that no one who has protected it can be absolved sacramentally without previous retractation and reparation from the scandal, and from the form and manner of swearing to said laws.

"The Holy Apostolic Roman Catholic Church, following the footsteps of the