Pius XII and ‘The Flight from the Land’

Extract

‘All over the world . . . our troubles have one bitter root . . . the ignoring of God’s majesty, the complete neglect of His heavenly commandments or, at best, a woeful inconsistency that can do nothing but hesitate between right and wrong.

’ It is this that gives rise to our blind excess of self-love— to our thirst for pleasure . . . the Flight from the Land (.Agrorum desertio), to levity in contracting marriage (in matrimoniis contrahendis ludificatio).’ Encyclical Letter, Sertum Laetitiae, to the United States Hierarchy on the 150th anniversary of their establishment.

We have set down this authoritative statement on a fundamental principle because only through authoritative statements and not through individual opinions can a sick world be led back to health. Individuals, and perhaps especially the young when endowed with a sensitive nature, are often capable of sensing social ailments. Yet their power to descry and describe social disease does not empower them to prescribe the remedy for the disease. Zeal to staunch the wounds of the world is amongst youth's most engaging qualities. But those of us who once were young —’ and that was long ago ‘—know that the best words an individual in the Church can now say to a world in extremis must only be words of commentary on what the Church’s authority has already said.

(2). Two anecdotes will serve to prepare the readers of this commentary to see what the commentator sees.