Pope Pius XII, Canonical Warning “Cum Compertum” on Ecumenism

His Holiness Pope Pius XII
Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office

Cum Compertum (1948)

Canonical Warning on Catholics attending Ecumenical Gatherings

Editorial Comment: Novus Ordo Watch is pleased to provide the first English translation of this rare, hard-to-find document issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office of the Roman Catholic Church, dated June 5, 1948, entitled Cum Compertum. It is a canonical warning, a so-called Monitum, issued by the Church’s highest authority against Catholic involved in ecumenical gatherings with non-Catholics, very much the kind now fully endorsed and promoted by the Novus Ordo Church and its bogus “Second Vatican Council”. We are providing this text to demonstrate the seriousness of the matter and that the true Roman Catholic Church condemns, and does not endorse, ecumenism. The reason for the Church’s strictness regarding this issue is that ecumenism gravely endangers the Faith, as explained in Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Mortalium Animos (1928) and Pope Pius XII’s instruction De Motione Oecumenica (1949).

WARNING

Mixed gatherings of non-Catholics with Catholics have been reportedly held in various places, where things pertaining to the Faith have been discussed against the prescriptions of the Sacred Canons and without previous permission of the Holy See. Therefore all are reminded that according to the norm of Canon 1325 § 3 laypeople as well as clerics both secular and regular are forbidden to attend these gatherings without the aforesaid permission. It is however much less licit for Catholics to summon and institute such kind of gatherings. Let therefore Ordinaries urge all to serve these prescriptions accurately.

These are to be observed with even stronger force of law when it comes to gatherings called “ecumenical”, which laypeople and clerics may not attend at all without previous consent of the Holy See.

Moreover, since acts of mixed worship have also been posed not rarely both within and without the aforesaid gatherings, all are once more warned that any communication in sacred affairs is totally forbidden according to the norm of Canons 1258 and 731, § 2.

Given at Rome, at the premises of the Holy Office, on June 5^th 1948.

Petrus Vigorita, Notary

The original Latin version of this document can be found in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis XL (1948), p. 257.