Fourth. The institution in each diocese of a council of censors to revise carefully all Catholic publications. The formula Imprimatur of the Bishop will be preceded by the Nihil obstat of the censor. The priest may not undertake, without permission of the Bishop, the direction of journals or reviews, and the Bishop will carefully examine those who write as editors or correspondents.
Fifth. The Bishops will forbid congresses of priests, except in rare occasions, when they shall be certain that there is no danger of Modernism, laicism, or presbyterianism.
Sixth. There shall be instituted in every diocese a council of vigilance, to watch over books and schools. They shall make certain as to the authenticity of the relics venerated in the churches, and see that the truth of pious traditions are not ridiculed in the newspapers; they shall maintain a surveillance over institutions of a social character and the publications pertaining thereto.
Seventh. One year after the publication of this Encyclical, the Bishops and religious superiors shall hand to the Holy See a diligent report, detailed and complete on the matters which constitute the object of the articles of this Encyclical; and thenceforth they shall do the same in their triennial report to the Holy See.
Such is in brief the resume of this famous document, whose appearance aroused the interest of the whole world. That its measures were effective is evident from the history of Modernism in the last three years. The incipient heresy is practically dead in the pale of the Church itself. Without it has invaded Protestantism, giving rise to pragmatism and all those vagaries which fill the philosophical curriculums of many universities. The Holy Father himself has gained a signal and complete victory.
And now a word as to the purport of the book which begins in the following pages. It is intended primarily to demonstrate that the struggle against the Church has ever been a struggle against the Holy See as the head and centre of all Catholicity. The repudiation of authority began with the Reformation. Then indeed it was merely an outcry against the claim of the Church to possess her authority from God. Later this error developed into a repudiation of human authority. Finally there came the repudiation of all lawfully constituted authority whether human or divine. It was the sequence of Protestantism, Rationalism and Radical Socialism.
Moreover, in the Catholic countries themselves the Church ever remained strong as long as all looked loyally to the centre of unity in the Holy See at Rome. The whole history of Jansenism, Gallicanism, Febronianism and Josephinism, is but the history of human ambition battling against the divine authority of the Sovereign Pontiff. And even then the result would have been a calming down of inordinate ambition before the claims of reason and Revelation, had not an impetus come from without. For a hundred years there has not been a revolution in the Latin lands which has not been aroused and engineered by the influence of English speaking powers. So that it may be said that if the Catholic countries were left to their own ways, they would remain not only Catholic, but up to date in every form of enlightenment and progress.