Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Religious Authority, Reason, Progress, Astronomy, Chemistry, Geology, Superstition

    Discusses some of the latest actions of Pope Pius IX, including his reaffirmation of 'the comic decrees of his Encyclical condemning civil and religious liberty' and his usual technique of confronting 'the inexorable logic of facts' with the 'inexorable logic of Popery'. Anticipates the 'fun' caused by the pope shrinking 'from no consequences of his theology', by publishing 'another Bull, condemning all the physical sciences, especially astronomy, chemistry, and geology, as diabolical illusions, corresponding to the Witchcraft of the Ages of Faith'.