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The Syllabus of Errors (Latin: Syllabus Errorum) was a document issued by Holy See under Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1864, Feast of the Immaculate Conception, on the same day as the Pope's encyclical Quanta Cura.Except perhaps for Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae ("On Human Life") condemning contraception, no papal document in modern times has been the target of more criticism than Pope Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors. A "savage war-whoop... groans and screechings" was how Orestes Brownson, the most distinguished American Catholic intellectual of the 19th century, described reaction to the document.With the syllabus' recent 150th anniversary, the obvious question is: What were those groans and screechings all about? Dated Dec. 8, 1864, the feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which Pope Pius had defined as a dogma of faith 10 years before, the document appeared at a midpoint in a pontificate that proved to be one of the longest ever, extending from 1846 to 1878. The syllabus, or list, is composed of 80 propositions declared erroneous by the pope. The document marked a turning point for him and for the Church.The "Quanta Cura" is the papal encylical of Pius IX, to which the Syllabus was attached.