The French Revolution Confronts Pius VI: Volume 1: His Writings to Louis XVI, French Cardinals, Bishops, the National Assembly, and the People of on the Civil Constitution of the Clergy

They will also see, as Talleyrand himself also saw, that one of the essential elements that makes the Church the Church is the right to appoint bishops and to discipline its own bishops. Volume I treats the first shock of the Revolution and the efforts of the Pope in 1790 and 1791 to oppose the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (which famous revolutionary and shrewd diplomat Talleyrand referred to as “the greatest fault of the National Assembly”). Editor and translator Jeffrey Langan presents the materials leading up to and directly connected with these decrees, in which the National Assembly attempted to set up a Catholic Church that would be completely submissive to the demands of the Assembly. The writings of Pope Pius VI, head of the Catholic Church during the most destructive period of the French Revolution, were compiled in two volumes by M.N.S. All freedom-loving people will be happy to read his distinc-tions between the secular power and the spiritual power. Many books and treatises, if they survived the revolution or the sacking from Napoleon’s armies. Volume II will be published later, and deals with the aftermath of the Civil Constitution through Pius’s death in exile). But during the Revolution, the reign of Napoleon, and the various revolutionary movements of the 19th century, there were extraordinary efforts to destroy writ

As the Pope understood the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the Revolutionaries failed to account for those who would act not according to reason but according to the ways that an ‘undisciplined imagination’ could suggest. Michael Jones, editor of Culture Wars Magazine.. If Talleyrand was a modern day Arius, trimming the Catholic faith to imperial imperatives, then Pope Pius VI was a modern day Athanasius and St. They represent an often untold story of the principled approach that the Church instinctively has taken when confronted with revolutionary chaos.” – Jo