Genre:

Poetry, Drollery

Subjects:

Religious Authority, Progress, Reason

    Subtitled 'Being a respectful Comment on the Pope's Encyclical and its Appendix', this poem criticises the religious dogmatism displayed by the latest edict of Pope Pius IX. In answer to such demands as renouncing 'the faiths we've learnt to view / As keystones of our freedom' and deeming '[the Pope's] dogmas above reason [...] His lore than science wiser', Punch turns the Pope's style of answer back on him with: 'Non possumus'. (6)