The French cardinals, January 16, 1892, presented the same ideas:
To resume: respect for the laws of the country, where they do not conflict with the exigencies of conscience; respect for the representatives of power; the frank and loyal acceptation of political institutions; but, at the same time, a firm resistance to the encroachments of the secular power upon the spiritual domain ... such are the duties which, at the present hour, are imposed upon the conscience and patriotism of the French Catholics.
It is sufficiently evident that all these declarations were in perfect conformity with the instructions of the Holy See; yet, that there might be no doubt as to the authoritative teaching of the Church in that matter, the Holy Father, Pope Leo XIII., addressed on February 16, 1892, an encyclical letter to the Catholics of France, wherein he pointed out the basis and conditions of a possible peace--provided it was sincerely wished for--between Catholicism and the republican Government.
After denouncing the "vast plot which certain men have formed to annihilate Christianity in France, and the animosity they display in striving to realize their design," he proceeds:
The Church, in her relations with the political powers, abstracts from the forms which differentiate them, in order to treat with them upon the great religious interests of peoples, knowing that to her belongs the duty of teaching them above every other interest. If each political form is good in itself, and can be applied to the government of peoples, the fact is that it does not encounter the political power under the same form among all peoples; each possesses its own. That form arises from the ensemble of circumstances, historical or national, but always human, which give rise in a nation to traditional or even fundamental laws, and through these is determined the particular form of government, the basis of transmission of supreme powers. It is useless to repeat that all individuals are bound to accept such governments, and to attempt in no way to overturn them or to change their form. Thence it is that the Church, the guardian of the truest and loftiest notion of political sovereignty, since she derives it from God, has always reproved the doctrines and condemned the men rebellious to legitimate authority. And that in times when the depositaries of power used it only to abuse her, thus depriving themselves of the most powerful support of their authority, and of the most efficacious means of popular obedience to their laws.