8 These great advantages are being lost, and are being followed by grave evils; for the enemies of Christian wisdom, be their rival pretensions what they may, are leading society to its ruin. Nothing can be more efficacious than their doctrines in the way of kindling in men's minds the flames of violence and of stirring up the most pernicious passions. In the sphere of science they are repudiating the heavenly lights of faith; and when once this torch is put out, the mind of men is usually carried away by errors, no longer sees the truth, and begins quietly to sink into the lowest depths of a base and shameful materialism. In the sphere of morals they are disdainfully rejecting the eternal and unchangeable reasoning, and are despising God-the sovereign Legislator and supreme Avenger and when once these foundations are torn away no sufficient authority remains for law, and the regulation of life merely depends upon the good pleasure and free will of man. In society, the liberty without limit which they preach and pursue engenders license, and this license is very soon followed by the overthrow of order, the most fatal scourge of the public welfare. Of a truth, it is impossible to see society in a more pitiable or miserable state than in those places where such men and such doctrines as we have been describing have gained the upper hand even for a moment. Unless recent examples had furnished evidence it would have been difficult to believe that men, in a transport of furious and criminal boldness, could even have cast themselves into excesses of such a kind, and while retaining as if in mockery the name of liberty, could have given themselves over to saturnalia of conflagrations and murders. If Italy has not, up to the present time, experienced a similar reign of terror, we must attribute it first to the especial protection of God; but the fact must be also recognized-to explain this preservation-that the people of Italy-the immense majority of whom are still faithful to the Catholic religion-have never been able to be subdued by the vicious and shameful doctrines We have denounced. And it must be confessed that if the ramparts erected by religion begin to give way, Italy also will fall into the same abyss, in which the greatest and most flourishing nations have in past times lain prostrate as victims. Similar doctrines involve similar consequences, and since the germs are infected with the same poisons, it cannot be but that they should produce the same fruits.
Source: Etsi Nos (Vatican.va)