Editing Pope Innocent XI (section)

===Reforming the administration of the papacy===
Immediately upon his accession, Innocent XI turned all his efforts towards reducing the expenses of the [[Roman Curia|Curia]]. He passed strict ordinances against [[nepotism]] among the cardinals. He lived frugally and exhorted the cardinals to do the same. In this manner he not only squared the annual deficit which at his accession had reached the sum of 170,000 [[Italian scudo|scudi]], but within a few years the papal income was even in excess of the expenditures. He lost no time in declaring and practically manifesting his zeal as a reformer of manners and a corrector of administrative abuses. Beginning with the clergy, he sought to raise the [[laity]] also to a higher moral standard of living. He closed all of the theaters in Rome (considered to be centers of vice and immorality) and famously brought a temporary halt to the flourishing traditions of Roman [[opera]]. In 1679 he publicly condemned sixty-five propositions, taken chiefly from the writings of [[Antonio Escobar y Mendoza|Escobar]], [[Francisco Suarez|Suarez]] and other [[casuistry|casuists]] (mostly [[Jesuit]] casuists, who had been heavily attacked by [[Blaise Pascal|Pascal]] in his ''[[Provincial Letters]]'') as ''propositiones laxorum moralistarum'' and forbade anyone to teach them under penalty of excommunication.<ref name=kelly287/> He condemned in particular the most radical form of [[doctrine of mental reservation|mental reservation]] (''stricte mentalis'') which authorised deception without an outright lie.

Personally not unfriendly to [[Miguel de Molinos]], Innocent XI nevertheless yielded to the enormous pressure brought to bear upon him to confirm in 1687 the judgement of the inquisitors by which sixty-eight [[Quietism (Christian philosophy)|quietist]] propositions of Molinos were condemned as blasphemous and heretical.