Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/580



574 REVIEW OF HIS PONTIFICATE.

so with impunity. It puts a malignant interpretation on all the acts of the clergy, bases suspicion upon the slenderest proofs and overwhelms it with the vilest accu- sations. Thus new prejudices are added to those 'v^'ith which the clergy are already overwhelmed, such for ex- ample as their subjection to military service, which is such a great obstacle for the preparation for the priest- hood, and the confiscation of the ecclesiastical patrimony which the pious generosity of the faithful had founded.

As regards the rehgious orders and religious con- gregations, the practice of the evangelical counsels made them the glory of society and the glory of religion. These very things rendered them more culpable in the eyes of the enemies of the Church and were the reasons why they were fiercely denounced and held up to contempt and hatred. It is a great grief for Us to recall here the odious measures which were so undeserved and so strongly condemned by all honest men by which the members of rehgious orders were lately ovenvhelmed. Nothing was of avail t save them, neither the integrity of their life which their enemies were unable to assail, nor the right which authorizes all natural associations entered into for an honorable purpose, nor the right of the constitutions which loudly proclaimed their freedom to enter into those organizations, nor the favor of the people who were so grateful for the precious services rendered in the arts, in the sciences, and in agriculture, and for the charity which poured itself out upon the most numerous and poorest classes of society. And hence it is that these men and women who themselves had sprung from the people and who had spontaneously renounced all the joys of family to consecrate to the good of their fellov/ men, in those peaceful associations, their youth, their talent, their strength, and their lives, were treated as malefactors as if they had formed criminal associations, and have been excluded from the common and prescriptive rights at the very time when men are speaking loudest of liberty. We