Note 176 — THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XXI., No. 126.—SEPTEMBER, 1875.

We quote at length the remarkable passage from which these words are quoted. It occurs in an allocution of the Holy Father to the cardinals, delivered in the Secret Consistory, Sept. 5, 1851, in which his Holiness announces the concordat which had recently been concluded with the Spanish government “The great object of our solicitude was to secure the integrity of our holy religion and to provide for the spiritual wants of the church. Now, you will see, the concordat arranges that the Catholic religion, with all the rights it enjoys by virtue of its divine institution, and of rules established by the sacred canons, should be exclusively dominant in that kingdom; every other religion will be openly banished from it and forbidden. It is, consequently, settled that the manner of educating and instructing the youth in all the universities, colleges or seminaries, in all the public and private schools, will be in full conformity with the doctrine of the Catholic religion. The bishops and heads of dioceses, who, by virtue of their office, are bound to labor with all their might to protect the purity of Catholic teaching, to propagate it, to watch that the youth receive a Christian education, will find no obstacle to the accomplishment of those duties; they will be able, without meeting the least hindrance, to exercise the most attentive superintendence over the schools, even the public ones, and to discharge freely, in all its plenitude, their office of pastor.” Is not this, in exact terms, the thesis here defended?