Religion: Ad Petri Cathedram

Kindly, fatherly Pope John XXIII issued his first encyclical last week, and it proved to be a fatherly message of warning, hope and encouragement. Ad Petri Cathedram (To the Chair of Peter), the circular letter’s opening words by which it will be known, is neither a trail-blazing social document (like Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum in 1891) nor a detailed doctrinal exposition (like Pius XII’s Humani Generis in 1950). It is instead notable for the familiarity of its style, the range of its concern and the warmth with which it faces its subject: On Promoting—Under the Impulse of Charity—Truth, Unity and Peace.

The Pope warned against error, ignorance (“the source and root of all evil”) and war, which can only bring “appalling destruction and ruin, and this whether the people are victor or vanquished.” He urged statesmen “to try every approach” leading to “fraternal harmony of nations.” Turning to another kind of harmony, the Pope hoped that the forthcoming Ecumenical Council (TIME, Feb. 9) will move non-Catholic Christians to join the Church as a “wonderful manifestation of unity . . . When we lovingly invite you to the unity of the Church, we are inviting you not to the home of a stranger but to your own, to the Father’s house which belongs to all.”

Then the Pope addressed himself “to each individual section of the Catholic Church”:

To BISHOPS, “both of the Eastern and of the Western Church, who as rulers of the Christian people bear, together with us, the burden of the day and the heat,” the Pope expressed sympathy for “the unhappy falling away of so many of your children, who are tricked by the wiles of error.”

To MISSIONARIES—”No undertaking, perhaps, is so pleasing to God as this, for it is intimately linked with that duty binding all—the spreading of God’s kingdom.” Of all in mission work in any capacity, the Pope said: “We desire them to know that they have a very special place in our heart.”

To NUNS—”How much these holy virgins accomplish! How extensive and how notable the work they do, which no one else can carry out with the same mixture of virginal and maternal solicitude.”

To THE SICK, WEAK, AGED—”Let them recall that by the sufferings of this life, which cleanse, upraise and ennoble the mind, we can gain the eternal joy of heaven.”

To THE POOR—They cause him grief, Pope John said, “not only because we have a father’s desire that in social matters, justice, which is a Christian virtue, should rightly control,” but also because “the enemies of the Church easily abuse the unjust conditions of the proletariat so as to lure them to their own side by false promises and specious errors.”

To THE PERSECUTED—”We wish to give offense to none; nay, we desire freely to pardon all and to beg this of God. But our conception of our holy office demands that we do all we can to protect the rights of our brethren and children, that we persist in our asking that freedom of law … be granted, as it ought, to everyone … If the rights of God and religion have been ignored or trampled on, the very foundations of human society, sooner or later, collapse into ruin.”