In an allocution to the extraordinary Secret Consistory of February 14, 1949, Pius XII affirms:
“[The Catholic Church] admits any and every form of civil government provided it be not inconsistent with divine and human rights. But when it does contradict these rights, bishops and the faithful themselves are bound by their own conscience to resist unjust laws.”
The Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer by Jean-Léon Gérôme
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII: A Theme Illuminating American Social History (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Appendix IV, p. 395.
