Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/41

Rh believer in Christian revelation would condemn as erroneous what is condemned in the syllabus.

"The theories of Naturalism," said one of the bishops, "have introduced into modern society habits altogether sensual and material, far removed from the Christian life." He hoped that the Council would go into details of practice, and condemn the excess of luxury, the indecent amusements, the haste to get rich by speculations of questionable honesty, the abandonment of domestic life, the profanation of marriage, the disregard of the days consecrated to God's service, the neglect of divine worship, the practices of usury. They further asked for a catechismus ad populum, as the Council of Trent ordered a catechismus ad parochos. They desired, further, a new code or digest of the canon law, from which should be excluded all that is obsolete and, by reason of the transformation of modern society, no longer expedient or of possible observance.

They desired also that the relations between the Church and State, or the spiritual and civil powers, might be clearly defined. They asked that broad and intelligible principles might be laid down from which they could never depart in judging of these mixed questions; that the Council would define in what way they ought to comport themselves in the presence of such facts as the civil liberty of the press and of wor-